A six-year-old boy from Hampshire is among the 27 victims of the mass shooting at a school in the United States.

Dylan Hockley was named by authorities as one of the dead at Newtown, Conneticut.

His older brother Jake, aged eight, survived the massacre.

The boys and their parents lived in Eastleigh before moving to America last year.

His mother, Nicole, a former marketing consultant, recently described to a local paper how the area was “a wonderful place to live” with “incredible” neighbours and “amazing” schools”.

Mrs Hockley and her husband Ian, who is from Eastleigh, live almost opposite where 20-year-old killer Adam Lanza lived. Dylan was among 20 children he shot dead together with seven adults at Sandy Hook elementary school before turning the gun on himself.

Mrs Hockley, who is from Rhode Island but lived in Britain for several years, moved back to the US two years ago with her husband, and sons Jake and Dylan.

She ran her own marketing consultancy in the UK and said in the newspaper article she was now making the most of life as a full-time mother in Conneticut.

Asked when she was most happy, she said: “I'm a pretty positive person all the time. “Being with my children is much more rewarding than I thought it would be, coming from a big career background.

“Spending time with my children gives me a lot of joy.” Describing Newtown, she added: “This was the place, when we were driving around, where we felt happy and comfortable. “The schools here have been amazing, and the people in my neighbourhood are incredible.

“Newtown is a wonderful place to live and we're looking forward to being here a long, long time.”

Dylan’s devastated grandmother Theresa Moretti has told how the family had moved to America for a better life.

She said she was out buying Christmas presents for Dylan and Jake when she received a garbled message on her answerphone from her daughter. Theresa called back and her daughter said: “Mum, how do you tell an eight-year-old his six-year-old brother is dead and not coming back?”

Originally from Rhode Island, Mrs Hockley spent 18 years in England, marrying her British husband, who works for IBM in New York, in Norwich in 1993. Both Dylan and Jake were born in the UK.

Meanwhile, US president Barack Obama will travel to Newtown today to attend a memorial service in memory of those shot dead in the Connecticut town's primary school on Friday.