For local parents, news of the Connecticut school shootings Friday was difficult to hear. And even harder to explain to their kids.   
 

Chisa Uyeki found out about the shootings on Facebook. She knows Newtown, Connecticut really well. She drives through when visiting relatives on the East Coast. She spent most of the day wondering how she would tell her kids -- a kindergartener and second grader at Aldama Elementary School in Highland Park -- about the shootings.
 
“I can’t understand it myself so I don’t know, I haven’t figured that out," she said. "I’m a librarian, I was out work and one of the things I read today was how to talk to kids.”

A few steps away, Philipp Lujan and his pre-school age daughter waited for his fifth grade son.
 
“I’m just picking him up right now… I’ll go ahead and tell him, some people just have sick mind,” he said.

Amelia Sencio, a single mom of fourth and sixth grade kids, said she’d lean on her religious faith to help her kids through it. 
 
“To entrust your safety with the Lord, anyone can be a target, but that fear if it’s time to go, you’ll be with God, that’s what’s very important to me,” she said.

Aldama’s flag flew at half staff in memory of the shootings victims at the elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut.