CRANBERRY TWP — Michele Gay dropped her daughter off at school on a cold December morning. That was the last time the two would ever see each other.

That’s because Adam Lanza, the man behind the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Conn., that claimed the lives of 20 students and six teachers, was only minutes behind her pulling into the school.

Gay, who lost her 7-year-old daughter Josephine in the brutal attack, is a former teacher who travels the country talking about school safety.

She came to Cranberry Tuesday morning to speak to more than 100 first responders, school administrators and teachers.

She spoke for more than an hour at the Pittsburgh Marriott North about what she’s learned since the tragedy and how to prevent another like it.

As Gay told it, she was “very much an ordinary mom focused on packing lunches” for her three daughters on the morning of Dec. 14, 2012.

Her youngest, Josephine, had recently suffered a concussion while playing at school and wasn’t sure if she’d attend school that day. She ultimately decided to go, so the pair hopped in the car for the short drive to Sandy Hook Elementary.

As it turns out, Lanza was only minutes behind.

With a projector screen, Gay detailed Lanza’s every movement as he shot out the glass of the locked doors in front of the school. She talked about how he went from classroom to classroom, shooting indiscriminately at whomever he encountered.

By this time, Gay had already received an automated message from the school district saying the school was in a lockdown because of a shooting.

It had to be a mistake, Gay thought. In the past, the school had only gone into lockdown mode because a bear or skunk had wandered onto the property.

It never entered her mind that it was something more serious until emergency vehicles went screaming by.

Gay started showing famous pictures from Sandy Hook, including one of a teacher calmly leading children out of the building in a uniform, single-file line.

That teacher was relying on training she received only a week before when the school practiced its emergency evacuation routine. Nobody knew it was training that would come in handy so soon.

“They were clearly relying on muscle memory,” Gay said, pointing at the teacher in the picture. “There wasn’t a whole lot of time to think; just to trust your feet to take you to that (safe) place.”

Gay rattled off a list of eight procedures every school should have in case of an emergency. The first item on that list is to practice off-site evacuations.

The off-site for Sandy Hook was the fire department, which was near the school.

However, another one of Gay’s protocols is to have strong lines of communication in place, something that wasn’t necessarily the case at Sandy Hook.

She remembers parents sitting, waiting in the fire house for word on their children. Most of those parents spent hours and hours in terror without need.

“We had parents thinking the very worst because our communication had fallen short,” Gay said. “The trauma, the panic for some families didn’t have to happen.”

Another crucial element of emergency preparedness is to have people ready to take on unfamiliar roles.

For instance, Gay said that Sandy Hook’s principal and school counselor were the first people killed during the attack, and the superintendent was too traumatized to act efficiently after the event.

In that scenario, it’s important to have other people lined up to help.

“There has to be a B-team to step in,” she said.

But perhaps the most important protocol in dealing with emergencies is training and preparedness. In times of intense tragedy, sometimes there isn’t time to think.

“We default to our level of knowledge and training,” she said.

Gay said her daughter had been in the last classroom Lanza entered before killing himself.

Her daughter was one of 16 who huddled in a tiny bathroom attached to the classroom. The bathroom was so small that teachers couldn’t even shut the door, so they stood in front of it when Lanza entered.

Everyone in the room died except for one student who was shielded by her classmates.

It was an experience that led Gay to form Safe and Sound: A Sandy Hook Initiative, in the hope of preventing something similar.

Anyone wishing to learn more can visit the initiative’s website at www.safeandsoundschools.org.