Sandy Hook victims mourned for lives cut short
USA TODAY
Published 6:24 p.m. ET Dec.16, 2012 - Updated 1:01 a.m. ET Dec. 18, 2012

Dylan Hockley, 6

While living in the United Kingdom in March 2009, Nicole Hockley pondered about the meaning of home.

She had been overseas for more than 16 years and was thinking about showing her boys the "dee-lites" of the U.S. she said on her @NicoleHockley Twitter feed.

In thinking about it, she decided that it didn't matter where she lived, as long as her husband and sons were around her.

"Home is where the people you love are," she wrote. "So I guess I am home."

But now the Hockley home life is shattered.

Nicole, husband, Ian, and their sons, Jake and Dylan, recently moved back to the U.S. and settled into a well-kept neighborhood in Newtown.

Their neighborhood of large houses with well-manicured lawns and tasteful holiday decorations also was home to others in this tragedy.

The shooter Adam Lanza and his mother Nancy — who he fatally shot at home — lived on their street.

Former school bus driver Marsha Moskowitz had that route. She remembers the Hockley family well.

"Dylan, when he saw the bus coming he would wave his hands with such excitement and joy," she says.

Jake was proud to be Dylan's big brother, she said. Their father, Ian, was very involved, and Nicole was a wonderful, caring mom, she said.

The family didn't return calls for comment, but Dylan's grandmother, Theresa Moretti, told London's Daily Mail that the family had moved to the U.S. "for a better life."

Nicole said they chose that town to live in "specifically because the school was so good," Moretti said. "My daughter told me, "It's safe and lovely here.'"

And even before they returned to the U.S., photos on Nicole's Twitter feed show happy family times together.

Family pictures she posted in 2009 show the family smiling. One, which Nicole labeled "Super Dylan!" shows her blue-eyed son happily smiling while wearing a Superman shirt.

'Dylan was a lovely boy," Theresa Moretti said in the Daily Mail. "He had dimples and blue eyes and a mischievous grin. He loved playing Wii and they had a trampoline in their garden. He loved garlic bread and his brother. We are shattered and will never be the same.'