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00:00Meanwhile, the final three funerals were held over the weekend for the victims of the Newtown Massacre.
00:06And this morning, Elaine Quijano has the first interview with police officers who responded to the call of shots fired.
00:14The first order that we checked, we were able to get into, which led to the boiler room of that elementary school.
00:21Officer Leonard Pena led Lieutenant Christopher Vangelli and Sergeant Aaron Bahamonde
00:26into Sandy Hook Elementary School minutes after the call went out.
00:31When I saw that Officer Pena had a rifle, I kind of told him, you're in front, buddy.
00:36And the heroism that he displayed just to get in front of us.
00:47The gunpowder smoke in there is nothing that I ever want to smell again because it was just overwhelming.
00:53What were you hearing at that point?
00:56Silence. There's no noises.
01:00The quiet was deafening. Every second seemed like an hour.
01:04I've never experienced fear like that ever. It was, I mean, it was free-falling almost.
01:11The officers made their way through the kitchen and into the lobby.
01:15That's when my world came crashing in on me because I saw the victims there and I knew this wasn't a joke, this was real.
01:25And we had somebody that was murdering people in there.
01:28We knew that we couldn't help them because they were beyond that.
01:31You just want it to be fake. Your mind keeps telling you that this is not real.
01:36What's been the hardest part of this for you?
01:39We're supposed to run towards danger. That's what we do.
01:44So I don't really care what I'm going through.
01:47I think about the parents, about those teachers.
01:50I think about them all the time now because they put themselves between a guy with a rifle who was meant on killing them and the children.
01:59And I don't know if I could have the courage to do that, to know I'm going to die and to just face it.
02:08And they laid down their lives for those kids, and those are the true heroes here as far as I'm concerned.
02:16For CBS This Morning, Elaine Quijano, Newtown, Connecticut.