The brother of one of the victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting is running for a seat in the Connecticut state Senate.
JT Lewis, 19 — whose brother, Jesse, was a first-grader when he and 19 other classmates and six staff members were killed after a gunman opened fire in the Newtown, Conn., school — tweeted a video on Monday announcing his candidacy challenging incumbent GOP state Sen. Tony Hwang.
In the video, Lewis, a Republican, shared how his 6-year-old brother shouted for his classmates to run while the gunman paused to reload, saving his friends’ lives at the expense of his own.{mosads}
“I believe that inside every single one of us is that same sense of innate courage that we never knew we had to do something extraordinary,” Lewis said in the video. “And to honor Jesse, I’ve decided to be courageous enough to run for state Senate in my home state of Connecticut.”
Lewis alleges his mother called Hwang, then a state representative, in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook shooting “to help prevent future tragedies,” but never received a response.
“I’m entering the fray because it is only with real leadership that Connecticut will see change that it is so desperate for,” he said in the video.
Lewis, a supporter of President Trump, met with him in December for a roundtable on school safety, NBC News reports.