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Sandy Hook Victim Loved Catching the Train to Sunnyside

Ben Wheeler

Dec. 18, 2012 PhillyBurbs.com

He loved The Beatles, lighthouses, and the No. 7 train to Sunnyside, Queens.

Benjamin Andrew Wheeler departed this life on Friday, Dec. 14, 2012 at the Sandy Hook Elementary School. He was 6 years old. (see stories below)

Benjamin was born in New York City on Sept. 12, 2006, a son of David Cole and Francine (Lobis) Wheeler.

Ben was an irrepressibly bright and spirited boy whose love of fun and excitement at the wonders of life and the world could rarely be contained. His rush to experience life was headlong, creative and immediate.

He was a devoted fan of his older brother, Nate, and the two of them together filled the house with the noise of four children.

He loved the local soccer program, often running across the field long after it was actually necessary, but always smiling and laughing as he moved the ball nearly always at full tilt.

email the author: news@queenspost.com

28 Comments

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Disgusted

I haven’t name called once. I’ve pointed out the truth in your words. But I still forgive you.

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O'Shea

@disgusted
I thought JFK made a difference when he was shot. Or was it RFK or MLK?
We came together and promised it will never happen again.
Oh and then there was Reagan and The Brady Bill
columbine, Virginia tech, new life church,
Colorado, Arizona, Newark, everyday new York
Chicago
What makes these children’s lives any different ?
I know you will keep on name calling.
So when you have awakened, let me know.

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Disgusted

@7traindelays I’m not sure why you feel that way. I didn’t read any comments that “smeared” you. To be perfectly honest, I’m still trying to figure out why the issue came up on this article. This is about memorializing the victims of this tragedy, not abortion…that’s a different topic for a different day. I don’t think it has a place here, for either side. Lets just remember these poor little angels and their protectors.

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7TrainDelays

As usual, the pro-abortion crowd try to make it seem that our sympathy and sadness for the unborn who are killed means that we care less for human beings in later stages of development that are murdered at the hands of others. That is a load of nonsense and moral illiteracy on your part. The slaughter of the unborn is indefensible so all you can do is smear people who disagree with you.

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Disgusted

Just because I haven’t had a forum to mourn others doesn’t mean I felt differently. All death is a tragedy, but children, especially in a place where they should feel safe and happy, being so savagely killed is a special kind of horror. So my outrage is REAL and you are heartless. I haven’t bought a gun. Have you? I’m upset that this happened. I want this world to be a better place. I want these children to be immortalized and hope that some good comes out of this. Maybe these kids aren’t different, but they can be the difference.

Again I say, God have mercy on your soul. I forgive you for your harsh words, as I’m sure those little angels do.

Reply
O'Shea

@disgusted.
Spare me your fake outrage. more than 10000 Americans were killed this year by American made guns. Where were your insults then ? Then there are the thousands of non Americans killed by American guns.
What makes these kids any different?
Why were All local sporting goods stores sold out of ARs right after the sandy hook murders?
Get some perspective. Insulting me will not change the truth about America’s collective consciousness.

Reply
Anonymous

@ JuliaJ When you say “in the womb” you make the mother of that child absolutely invisible and irrelevant, which is why most anti-abortionists are without credit. Trying to extract the mother and the father from the argument literally makes the argument baseless. If you want people to stop having abortions do something years and years before the child was conceived: teach men to understand the life and death power inherent in the act of coitus, teach women to respect themselves for who they are, rather than for their sex-appeal, teach society to value people over profits. Abortion is like the spectacular eruption of a volcano, a visible symptom of problems deep beneath the surface. Facile statements just don’t cut it.

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Disgusted

O’Shea–how much of an insensitive, close-minded, heartless monster do you have to be? Reading your comments literally nauseates me. Only the lowest of human beings can say what you’ve said. You have no respect for these poor departed little angels. And PS–the children were of all races, including Hispanic. Get your facts straight before you spew hateful misinformation. God have pity on you.

86Mets–is there anything you don’t turn into an abortion issue? You don’t like it, leave the state. But don’t bring that issue into this tragedy. Also if video games were such an issue, then every teenager in the world would be shooting cops and civilians. But they don’t because they know right from wrong. It is a parent’s job to determine whether or not a child can differentiate reality from fantasy. HE should have never been playing those games, perhaps, but his parents were the ones who needed to stop that. I even know autistic children who play Die Hard and Call of Duty and they still know that the game is a game and it isn’t real life and you’re not allowed to do those things in real life because that’s what their parents have so tirelessly instilled in them.

Ruben–yes and no. I understand what you mean. But also understand that this tragedy has shaken up even those of us who didn’t know them and were in other states-obviously nowhere near as much, not even close, in comparison to their family and friends. But we as a nation are grieving. We need to immortalized these angels so that they are the ones remembered and not the monster who took their lives away from them. And also hopefully in displaying how beautiful these individuals were who were taken from the world, we can further convince those in power to correct the issues that allowed this to happen.

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O'Shea

Violent video games desensitive and make one stupid at the worst. That lanza buy was a nutjob and that’s it. Stop making excuses.

Reply
O'Shea

The only reason we are reading about this and getting 24hr coverage is because a white kid shot up some other white kids. What makes our kids better than other kids in the world?
Oh and blaming big pharmaceutical is purred fudge pile. The kid was a psycho nut job. Just like there are many nuts here in sunnyside. The pigeon poisoners and cat killers. They are all here.

Reply
J P I

@86mets. What do you think is worse? Terminating a pregnancy, or gunning down first graders? Do you really even think they’re comparable?

Reply
86Mets

Killing children is acceptable in this country as long as the child is still in the womb. In fact, it’s a right apparently.

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86Mets

Violent video games also need to be addressed. They are nothing but training machines for sociopaths.

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Craic Dealer

Ruben is right in that we should NOT ONLY grieve but also solve for to prevent events like this the future. Thats the part up to debate.

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Ruben

This is a tragedy that the families and friends should be grieving over. If life stopped for every kid that tragedy has befallen then we would be reading kids profiles all day and all night. seriously, the thing that should be going on now is talking about the issues, not what kid liked to do what and what his or her goals were. its too much and its nauseating.

Reply
JuliaJ.

The mental health issue is paramount and is being virtually ignored. Prayers for the victims and their families. I am already sick of the politicians exploiting this tragedy.

Reply
Phuck Pharma

This is not only a gun issue, it’s how we handle mental health issues in the U.S. We have to recognize that we have legal drug companies pushing pills on TV (with cartoons), online, social networks and now via mobile phones and tablets. The easy solution in the U.S is pop a pill and pretending over prevention. The accountability of a damn leg cramp is eliminated from our consciousness and replaced with a pill. No one speaks up at mass because the media won’t play that message (they are making unprecedented ad revenues off pharma). Primetime pills in a half conscious market.

You might say this has nothing to do with pills, he was not on pills. My response: We are all on pills if we watch TV. It takes 7 time of broadcasting a spot on TV to influence the market. Watch TV with your kids tonight for 1 hour and count how many times you see drugs on our tube.

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Craic Dealer

All this gratuitous media coverage has encouraged a lot of people I know to purchase a side arm for defense. If only someone could have responded to Lanza in similar fashion to protect these little kids. Tragic.

Reply
Ex

@Ruben – Yes. Yes we do. These are all people who were killed & they each deserve to be remembered & memorialized. But feel free not to read. (Of course not the Sunnyside Post. You should always read the Sunnyside Post.)

Reply
Ruben

all the coverage of this tragedy is pretty nauseating. Do we really need a background story and a profile of every victim?

Reply

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