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Associated Press
NEWTOWN, Conn. — Newtown celebrated Christmas amid piles of snow-covered teddy bears, long lines of stockings and heaps of flowers as volunteers manned a 24-hour candlelight vigil in memory of the 20 children and six educators gunned down at an elementary school just 11 days before the holiday.
Well-wishers from around the country showed up early Tuesday to hang ornaments on a series of memorial Christmas trees while police officers from around the state took extra shifts to direct traffic, patrol the town and give police here a break.
The expansive memorials throughout town have become a gathering point for town residents and visitors alike. A steady stream of residents, some in pajamas, relit candles that had been extinguished in an overnight snowstorm. Others took pictures, dropped off toys and fought back tears at a huge sidewalk memorial in the center of Newtown's Sandy Hook section that is filled with stuffed animals, poems, flowers, posters and cards.
In the morning, Newtown resident Joanne Brunetti watched over 26 candles that had been lit at midnight in honor of those slain at Sandy Hook Elementary School. She and her husband, Bill, signed up for a three-hour shift and erected a tent to ensure that the candle flames never went out throughout the day.
"You have to do something and you don't know what to do, you know? You really feel very helpless in this situation," she said. "People have been wonderful to everybody in Newtown whether you were part of what happened or not. My thought is if we were all this nice to each other all the time maybe things like this wouldn't happen."
At a town hall memorial, Faith Leonard waved to people driving by and handed out Christmas cookies, children's gifts and hugs to anyone who needed it.
"I guess my thought was if I could be here helping out maybe one person would be able to spend more time with their family or grieve in the way they needed to," said Leonard, who drove to Newtown from Gilbert, Ariz., to volunteer Tuesday morning.
Police have yet to offer a theory about a possible motive for gunman Adam Lanza's rampage on Dec. 14. The 20-year-old Newtown man, who lived at home, killed his mother in her bed before carrying out the massacre at the elementary school, then killing himself.
