My Sandy Hook Family Fund Will Send $40,000 Checks to Families

One fund set up specifically to help victims' families in the aftermath of the Dec. 14 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting is ready to distribute funds. The My Sandy Hook Family Fund will be mailing out $40,000 checks to all 26 families of shooting victims this week, according to the Danbury News-Times.

"This was designed to provide some relief directly to the families," Pullman & Comley chairman D. Robert Morris, who provided free legal counsel to the fund, told Patch.

Some families may not be able to go back to work following the shootings, or may have run into unexpected expenses since Dec. 14, according to the News-Times.

This fund was organized through Newtown's Wells Fargo branch by a Newtown-based attorney, according to Wells Fargo representatives. It is the first organized fund to distribute any money directly to victims' families. While the larger Sandy Hook School Support Fund, set up through the United Way of Western Connecticut and Newtown Savings Bank, has raised more than $8 million, it is still in a structuring process and has not distributed funds yet.

"The founders of the fund thought it was very appropriate to get these funds out in time. And to the extent that more funds can be raised, obviously in the future more funds will be distributed. But for now, the purpose was to help them with immediate need."

While the organizers are not strictly remaining anonymous, Morris said they're not seeking the limelight either.

"I think they're just as happy to remain in the background and have the focus of the fund be for the families of the victims," he said.