Latest news, weather, high school sports for Michigan’s Upper Peninsula

NEGAUNEE -- A horrifying scene on Friday as twenty children and six adults were gunned down at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

Parents in the town of 27,000 people are describing the terror they faced as they raced to the school, hoping to find their children alive and safe. One man said his six-year-old son saw the gunman burst into his classroom and shoot the teacher.

Parents in the Upper Peninsula are reacting to the situation. UpperMichigansSource was at Lakeview Elementary in Negaunee on Friday afternoon as parents and grandparents waited to pick up their kids. They said the massacre hits too close to home.

"There's no words, it's just so sad," said one Negaunee mother. The unimaginable horror in Connecticut turned her day upside down.

"I took a break at work, and I came to pick up my son, just because I want to just give him a hug," she said.

A grandmother said, "I was shocked. I couldn't believe it, and I just felt so bad for the parents, and I just wanted to go to school and hug my grandkids."

President Obama addressed the nation from the White House on Friday afternoon. "As a country, we have been through this too many times," said the President.

A highly emotional President Obama said he feels "overwhelming grief" for the victims and their families. "I react, not as a president, but as anybody else would. As a parent," he said.

In Newtown, frantic parents rushed back to the school Friday morning, desperate for any information about their children.

"It was the longest drive of my life, not knowing," said one Sandy Hook parent.

That feeling of uncertainty reached all the way to the Upper Peninsula.  Some of their comments follow:

"Not knowing and that, I just couldn't imagine to be in their place, I just feel so bad for them."

"Christmas is coming up, and all those kids. You think your kids are safe at school and sometimes awful things happen."

"These are just little elementary kids. How could anybody just open up gunfire on little kids?"

"It just made me sick."