My wife and I, parents of a second-grader, watched in sadness and horror the news coverage dealing with the horrible tragedy in Connecticut — those poor, innocent children taken from this world by a sick coward, not to mention the loss of the teachers and administrators at that school who were there to teach and protect them.

This type of situation makes every parent of a school-age child realize that that could happen in any town in the United States, as it did in Newtown, Conn.

That said, I take offense and question the powers that be at the Butler Eagle who made the decision to publish the Dec. 16 front-page article headlined “Victim’s friend talks about SV teacher.”

In that article, the victim’s friend talks about knowing that the man she briefly dated is responsible for the murder of Seneca Valley teacher Steven Russo. That article was the top headline on the front page; the tragedy in Newtown fell under that.

My main concern here might not seem like much to most people, but to those of us in the Mars School District it should infuriate and petrify everyone.

That’s because the person in the article is a Mars Elementary School second-grade teacher. I am totally appalled that anyone at the newspaper would be insensitive to that fact and run that article on the same day that the newspaper would run the article about the Connecticut shooting, which was at an elementary school where no one thought anything like that could happen.

Locked doors didn’t stop Adam Lanza, the Connecticut shooter, and anyone with a “good enough” reason could do it again, anywhere, anyplace, anytime.

Better care needs to be taken by the Eagle to not throw salt into the wounds of those of us hurting and concerned about our children’s safety and well-being.