A new court filing revealed a gun manufacturer subpoenaed Newtown Public School for records of the murdered kindergarten and first-grade students from the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting in Connecticut.
Remington, the now-bankrupt company that made the guns used in the school shooting and being sued by nine families of the victims, demanded the disciplinary records of five kindergarten and first-grade students who were killed in the deadly mass shooting.
According to a motion filing seeking to protect the victims' families from further subpoenas, attorneys wrote:
"In mid-July, the defense served a subpoena on the Newtown Public School District seeking: 'Any and all educational records in your possession including but not limited to, application and admission paperwork, attendance records, transcripts, report cards, disciplinary records, correspondence and any and all other educational information and records pertaining to' each of the five first-graders whose Estates are plaintiffs in this case.
People had so many questions.
The motion which was filed on Thursday additionally read:
"There is no conceivable way that these [records] will assist Remington in its defense, and the plaintiffs do not understand why Remington would invade the families' privacy with such a request."
"Nonetheless, this personal and private information has been produced to Remington."
According to Vice News, Josh Koskoff—a lawyer representing one of the Sandy Hook victims' parents—told Motherboard:
"We have no explanation for why Remington subpoenaed the Newtown Public School District to obtain the kindergarten and first grade academic, attendance, and disciplinary records of these five schoolchildren."
Social media users offered their suspected theories.
Koskoff added:
"The records cannot possibly excuse Remington's egregious marketing conduct, or be of any assistance in estimating the catastrophic damages in this case."
"The only relevant part of their attendance records is that they were at their desks on December 14, 2012."
The media outlet also said Remington additionally subpoenaed employment records of four teachers killed in the shooting.
A total of 26 people—20 of whom were children between six and seven years old and six who were adults—were killed in the fatal shooting on December 14, 2012.
Nine families of the slain victims have been trying to sue the gun manufacturer since 2014.
The plaintiffs alleged the Bushmaster XM15-E2S rifle, the AR-15 style semi-automatic weapon used in the shooting, was suitable for use by military and policing applications and that the company inappropriately marketed the rifle to civilians.
Remington unsuccessfully stopped the lawsuit in 2019 after the Supreme Court rejected the appeal.
The gun manufacturer previously responded to a discovery request by submitting 18,000 memes, cartoons, and ice bucket challenge videos in place of requested internal documents.
