News of a deadly school shooting at a Connecticut elementary school has sent shockwaves through North America, including the Maritime region.

Some local parents are expressing their grief over the devastating incident.

“I can’t believe it, it’s very sad,” said parent Amanda Diaz in Halifax.

Twenty-seven people, including 20 children, were killed in the shooting in Newtown.

“This is a tragedy for everyone involved,” said parent Michelle West. “The teachers, the people at the school, the little tiny kids.”

Most parents who spoke with CTV News said they don’t worry about school safety here, but they admit at a time like this, it’s hard not to wonder.

“It does, like, if something could ever happen here, like who knows really,” says Diaz.

Many parents are now left trying to figure out how they will explain the shooting to their own children.

“When my kids ask me about something like this, that they’ve heard because it will go around the school, I just say that some people are really, really sad, really disturbed, and it won’t happen to you,” said parent Mary Hale.

“Which, I don’t know if it’s the right thing to say.”

Hale’s children were in the car with her when she first heard about the shooting. She quickly turned the radio off.

“My older daughter was in the car and we chatted about it a little bit,” said Hale. “She’s 14 and we had a really deep discussion about, you know, why people do things like that.”

We may never know why the man responsible for the shooting committed the act; he was found dead at the scene. There are reports he turned the gun on himself.

The public shooting is one of several that have already occurred this year. In July a gunman killed 12 people at a Colorado movie theatre, and in August, six people were killed at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin before the gunman turned the weapon on himself.

With files from CTV Atlantic's Jacqueline Foster