Sandy Hook School Shooting Victim’s Animal Sanctuary Dreams Come True

A little girl who loved animals and was killed in the Sandy Hook school massacre is being honored with an animal shelter in her name.

The 6-year-old girl, named Catherine Violet Hubbard, was the type of child who raised money via returnable bottles and cans to buy bones for dogs at the pound. She even had designed business cards for an imaginary animal shelter, listing herself as “caretaker.”

Now, her dream is becoming a reality. The state is preparing to transfer 34 acres of a former psychiatric facility to a foundation that is raising money to go to an animal sanctuary. This sanctuary will honor the life of Hubbard, who was one of 20 first-graders killed in the 2012 Sandyhook elementary school shooting.

“We know that what we’re doing is honoring Catherine and it’s about Catherine,” said Jenny Hubbard, according to an AP article. “And that alone has helped us stay connected to her memory and honoring her life… We have said from the very onset of this, we were not going to be defined by the two minutes of evil that took her life.”

The sanctuary will include a shelter and adoption center for cats and dogs, a refuge for farm and work animals, and a rescue and release program for injured, native wildlife. Plans also include a state-of-the-art veterinarian clinic and a welcome center for educational programs. The goal is to open the main building in Newtown in 2016.

The state land for the sanctuary will be under the private Catherine Violet Hubbard Foundation, which was set up by her parents. To date, $800,000 has been donated, even though formal fundraising efforts have not yet begun.

“We remind ourselves every day there are kids murdered across the country and not everybody has the opportunity to do this for their child’s life,” Jenny Hubbard said to The Salt Lake Tribune.

For more information, check out the Facebook page for the Catherine Violet Hubbard Animal Sanctuary.

Image source: AP Photo/Jenny Hubbard