Task force will handle donations in wake of massacre at school


Associated Press

NEWTOWN, Conn.

Chris Kelsey is the tax assessor in Newtown, but for the better part of three weeks, his job has been setting up and organizing a warehouse to hold the toys, school supplies and other gifts donated in the wake of the massacre at the Sandy Hook Elementary school.

Despite the town’s pleas to stop sending gifts, Kelsey said trucks have been arriving daily with tokens of support from across the world, some for the families of those killed, others for the children of Sandy Hook, still others for the town.

A task force has been set up to coordinate the more than 800 volunteers who have been working to sort the gifts, open mail and answer the thousands of emails and phone calls offering assistance.

The volunteers have begun making a dent in the pile of tens of thousands of teddy bears that stretched to the warehouse ceiling.

By last week, they had sorted 30,000 of them into small, medium and large sizes, catalogued them and put them in boxes.

They also are separating and boxing piles of crayons, pencils, books and much more.

There also are 26 large moving boxes in the warehouse, each labeled with a victim’s name.

When a gift comes in specifically addressed to those families, it goes in those boxes.

The families have been coming in periodically to empty them.

The Newtown Volunteer Task Force has a website, a Facebook page, a Twitter account and a toll-free telephone number, 855-364-6600, with eight lines coming in.

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