The Whole
Truth About The Sandy Hook Shootings May Well Never Be Known As Questions Of Mental
Health Are Still Stigmatized, Hidden Behind The Closed Doors Of Desperate
Families And No Where Near Addressed Properly By The Health Care Systems Of
This Nation.
BUT
THIS IS THE INFORMATION WE HAVE SO FAR.
Sandy Hook Gunman
'Feared His Mother Was Planning To Have Him Committed To Psychiatric Home And
Targeted The Children That She Loved More Than Him.
Newtown Resident
Raises Possibility That Adam Lanza, 20, Was Angry And May Have Snapped Over
Mother's Possible Plans To Commit Him
Nancy Lanza, 52, Was
Shot To Death In Her Own Bed By Her Son Before The Sandy Hook Killings.
Lanza Killed 20
Children And Six Adults In The School Before Killing Himself As Police Closed
In
By MEGHAN KENEALLY
Police
are still searching for the motive of Adam Lanza's killing spree, but one
working theory is that he was angry that his mother was planning to commit
him to a psychiatric facility because he was becoming too difficult for her
to handle alone.
Given
his decision to kill his mother Nancy while she lay sleeping in her bed at
their Connecticut home and then drive to his former elementary school to
purposefully kill innocent children, there had to be a strong connection in
his mind between his anger and the school.
Nancy,
52, was thought to volunteer at Sandy Hook Elementary School, and so the
theory extends to the fact that Adam felt he loved those children more than
she loved him, since she was planning to send him away.
Fox
News quotes a neighborhood figure, whose father works as the pastor of an
area church, as saying that the 20-year-old shooter found out that his mother
was in the legal process of having him committed and was upset.
That
news, coupled with his jealousy of the time she allegedly spent with a group
of kindergarteners at Sandy Hook, is thought to have served as the basis of
the killing.
A NUMBER OF FACTORS
ARE STILL UNCONFIRMED IN THE THEORY, AND IT APPEARS THAT THEY MAY REMAIN AS
SUCH FOR SOME TIME.
Records
of conservatorship filings, which Nancy Lanza would have needed to make in
order to commit her son since he is over 18-years-old, are sealed by the
courts so if any such filings were made they will not be released publicly.
'Adam
Lanza believed she cared more for the children than she did for him, and the
reason he probably thought this (was the fact that) she was petitioning for
conservatorship and wanted to have him committed,' Joshua Flashman told Fox
News.
One of
the biggest questions remaining ever since the shooting was reported on
Friday was Nancy's connection to the school which was clearly singled out as
a target by Adam.
The
majority of his shooting was limited to the reception, where he forced his
way into the building and killed those standing in his way, and then to a
single first grade classroom.
Those
children are thought to be the ones that Nancy grew close with during the
last academic year, when they were in kindergarten.
Initial
reports immediately after the shooting claimed that Nancy was a full time or
even substitute teacher at the elementary school, though as the chaos of the
day slowed, school officials said that she was not on any records of having
worked there in any formal capacity.
That
option leaves the possibility open that she volunteered her time with the
young children, though school board member Cody McCubbin could not confirm
that role when asked by MailOnline.
That was
echoed by Lillian Bittman, a former school board member who told the Wall
Street Journal: ‘No one has heard of her. Teachers don’t know her.’
Though
the court records will never back up the claim that Nancy was trying to have
her son committed, her actions do lend credence to the idea because she had
spent much time over the course of this year traveling to different schools
to find a suitable place to send Adam.
Former
babysitters of Adam's said that she warned that she could never turn her back
on the young boy, meaning that when she went to visit prospective schools,
Adam was either with her or very aware of the fact that she had gone shopping
for his next home.
In a
Facebook conversation between Nancy and her former sister-in-law Marsha,
Nancy revealed that she had wanted to downsize from her $1.4million home in
Newtown.
'I am
still in the same place but getting to the point where I may want a smaller
house. I travel a lot, spend time with friends, work with a couple of
charities,' she wrote in one of the messages.
EXCLUSIVE: Revealed,
The Family Secret That Haunted The Tragic Mother Of Sandy Hook Shooter, Her
Plans To Find A New Home For Her Troubled Son - And How She Feared 'Her Time
Was Running Out'
The
mother of the Newtown shooter spent her last months alive criss-crossing the
globe in a desperate search for a new home as she knew that ‘time was running
out’, MailOnline can reveal today.
Nancy
Lanza's sister-in-law Marsha revealed that she had traveled to nine cities in
three countries because she wanted out of the mansion she shared with her
troubled son Adam - and could have known the end was coming.
It is
thought that Nancy - who was suffering from multiple sclerosis - wanted to
downsize and find a place for him to go to college as she was tired of home
schooling the troubled 20-year-old.
In a
Facebook conversation seen by MailOnline, Nancy also gave the most revealing
account of her own family problems and how they may have shaped her life
She
revealed how her own father shut out one of his other daughters at a young
age and lived a ‘secret life’ until his past came out.
He
‘turned his back’ on baby Cheryl when he remarried and moved away from his
home in Ohio to New Hampshire.
There he
started afresh and gave birth to Nancy Lanza whose son Adam killed 28 people
including himself and Nancy on Friday during his school rampage in Sandy Hook
Elementary School, Connecticut.
In a
Facebook message to a relative just two months earlier Nancy spoke in candid
terms about her family and said: ‘Yes, life is funny and strange. Lies people
tell and try to live in those lies. Sad’.
The
disclosure could explain why Nancy was so devoted to Adam even though she was
struggling with his mental issues.
But it
raises grave and urgent questions over her own family and suggests that
secrets and lies run deep amongst them.
Nancy,
who herself had been diagnosed with MS, supposedly had a ‘charmed upbringing’
in Kingston, New Hampshire, where her mother was the school nurse.
She
married her high school sweetheart Peter Lanza and they moved to Newtown,
Connecticut, in 1999 where they moved into a $1.5m Colonial property.
Ten
years later however they divorced - but Nancy’s troubles were only just
beginning.
Speaking
to MailOnline Marsha Lanza, from Crystal Lake, Illinois, said: ‘Nancy opened
up with me and told me she had been diagnosed with MS.
‘This
was a few years ago but I don't think many of the family knew. She wasn't
someone to make a fuss. She accepted life as it was.
‘Over
the last year she suddenly seemed to be traveling a lot. I know she went to
England and was all over the US.
‘There
was no sign her health was getting worse. She still looked beautiful, so full
of life, but maybe she felt time was running out.’
The
Facebook conversation seems to back this up. On October 9, Nancy wrote to
Marsha that she had been to ‘a little bit of everywhere’.
She
wrote: ‘Boston, New York, Maine, Toronto, London, San Francisco, Nantucket,
Charlotte, Baltimore...that covers this year : )’
Nancy
also talked about wanting to move to a smaller house but did not want to sell
her home at a loss.
She also
wanted to keep ‘stability’ for the sake of Adam, who was diagnosed with
Asperger’s and was withdrawn.
She
writes of a ‘low key life and very happy’ but her family past has clearly
disturbed her.
Nancy,
52, said on Facebook that her half-sister Cheryl was born in Cincinnati,
Ohio, but that her father and her mother appear to have disowned the child.
She
writes: ‘She seems nice and I would like to meet her. I feel sorry that my
parents turned their backs in her at such a young age. No one is talking so I
don't know the real story.
‘As for
Cheryl...she had no clue what happened. Her mother is dead, our father is
dead, and my mother won't say. It's a mystery. We will never have
answers...just have to deal with what is.’
In the
conversation Nancy reflects on Adam and her other son Ryan, 24, and says
that ‘they do grow up too fast'.
But in
yet another sign of family strain, Ryan and Adam have not spoken in two
years. Peter Lanza has also not spoken to Adam over the same period.
Marsha
said that Nancy ‘loved spending time with her boys’ even if there were deep
divisions between them.
She
said: ‘I knew she had issues with him [Adam] but she never felt threatened by
him. If she had felt threatened she'd have gone for help.
‘I don't
think the two boys were that close. They were just two very different kids.’
Nancy
had dedicated her life to looking after her autistic son Adam, who, after
killing his mother, took her car and three of her guns to Sandy Hook
Elementary School on Friday and shot dead 20 children and six adults. He then
turned the gun on himself.
She
moved to Newtown with her husband Peter in 1998. He would commute to the city
for his job as vice president of General Electric.
The
couple divorced in 2009 after their marriage 'irretrievably broke down'.
Peter made $445,000 a year and agreed to pay $240,000 a year in alimony and
child support, according to court records.
This was
likely due to the cost of Adam's care.
As the
once-peaceful New England town continues today to bury the victims of
Friday's massacre, it was revealed the bodies of Nancy and Adam Lanza are not
being released by the medical examiner for another week.
Marsha
Lanza told the Washington Post her brother-in-law Peter will likely organize the
funeral.
'She was
my friend,' she said. 'I said to my husband, "Who’s going to bury
Nancy?" He said, "Knowing my brother, he’ll take care of it,
because that’s the right thing to do".'
Nancy's
family - her mother and three adult siblings - have gathered at the family's
1740s farmhouse in Kingston where the 52-year-old had a charmed upbringing.
When she
married her high school sweetheart in 1981, the couple built a house next
door to the home where they lived until they moved to Newtown.
Adam
Lanza, 20, had lived his whole life at the $1.4million home in Newtown where
he killed his mother while she lay in bed in her pajamas.
Nancy
Lanza was described as a 'gun enthusiast' who taught Adam, who had
autism-related Asperger's Syndrome, how to shoot.
The four
weapons, including a Glock 10-mm handgun, a Sig Sauer 9-mm handgun and a
Bushmaster AR-15 assault rifle, used in the mass shooting at the elementary
school all belonged to Nancy Lanza.
Friends
of the mother-of-two told the Today show on Monday that she was not a
'survivalist' despite earlier reports that she had been stockpiling food
because she thought the world economy was on the verge of collapse.
John
Bergquist said: 'Shooting was one of her hobbies. It wasn’t her main hobby.
She loved the arts, culture. She loved the finer things in life. She loved to
go to Red Sox games, and that’s the Nancy I knew.'
Another
friend Ellen Adriani said Nancy was devoted to her two sons and took care of
all Adam's needs.
Her
other son, 24-year-old Ryan works for Ernst & Young in Manhattan and
lives in Hoboken, New Jersey.
Nancy
was believed to have been planning a new life with her 20-year-old son Adam
as he made plans to go to college. She had been thinking about going wherever
he decided to study engineering - Seattle or one of the Carolinas - and live
nearby, according to the New York Post.
Russ
Hanoman told the Post: 'They had recently gone to many different colleges
looking for the right program for Adam, and the right living situation.'
'Never Turn Your Back
On Adam': Nancy Lanza's Chilling Instructions To Babysitter Before He Watched
'Gifted Killer Who Could Not Feel Physical Pain'.
Ryan Kraft Described Adam
As Very Intelligent, Quiet And Introverted
Required Extra
Supervision At School From A Physical Disorder Which Meant He Could Not Feel Pain
His
mother would sometimes have to be summonsed to deal with him
A school
psychologist was assigned to monitor Adam full time.
Federal
agents say there is no evidence that Lanza went to a firing range in recent
months to practice for the shooting.
When he
was freshman at high school he was flagged to the school security chief.
She
withdrew him when he was 16 after ongoing disputes about his care
Nancy
planned to move to North Carolina or Washington state so she could enroll him
in another college.
Governor
implies that school gunman Adam Lanza killed himself and may have been
stopped in his tracks before he could kill more people.
The
babysitter who watched the Sandy Hook Elementary school killer Adam Lanza
when he was nine-years-old was warned by mother Nancy to never turn his back
on the child, not even to go to the bathroom.
Ryan
Kraft, who now lives in California, said he started shaking when he heard
that the young boy he once looked after had shot his mother in the face
before gunning down 20 innocent children and six adults on Friday.
Mr Kraft
recalls Nancy Lanza's chilling words to him before she left him in charge of
her young son.
'[She
said] to keep an eye on him at all times...to never turn my back, or even to
go to the bathroom or anything like that.'
He
described Adam as a quiet, very intelligent and introverted.
'Whenever
we were doing something, whether it was building Legos, or playing video
games, he was really focused on it. It was like he was in his own world,' he
told KCBS.
It was
also revealed that the 20-year-old killer, who some who knew him described as
a 'genius,' suffered from a condition which meant he could not feel any
physical pain.
Newtown
school district’s then head of security, Richard Novia, told the Daily Beast
that the disorder meant he required extra supervision whenever he handled
equipment with which he might unknowingly injure himself.
Novia
recalls that Adam also suffered psychological spells as a result of the
physical condition, withdrawing so much that his mother would have to be
summoned.
'He was
very withdrawn and meek, he was one of those freshmen in very much in need of
watching. he would have episodes where he would just shut down. He'd sit
staring at the ground and refuse to talk to anyone.
'If that
boy would've burned himself, he would not have known it or felt it
physically. It was my job to pay close attention to that, Mr Novia said.
He told
the Wall Street Journal that it was not unusual for school officials to meet
about troubled students, but that Lanza's problems were more severe than
most, so much so, that he was assigned a permanent psychologist.
Mr Novia
said he told the school's three security staffers who reported to him to
carefully monitor the student and 'where he was, who he was with, and what he
was doing.'
Federal
authorities said on Monday that Lanza, 20, had fired guns at shooting ranges
over the past several years, but there's no evidence he did so recently as
practice for the rampage.
Debora
Seifert, a spokeswoman for Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and
Explosives, told the AP that investigators have no indication now 'that the
shooter engaged in shooting activities in the past six months.'
One of
the major unanswered questions has been whether Lanza trained in advance for
Friday's attack that killed 20 children and six adults inside the Sandy Hook
Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
When he
was in his sophomore year at high school, Nancy Lanza decided to withdraw her
16-year-old son after ongoing disputes with the school district over what she
believed was the inadequate care and attention he was receiving.
Her
sister-in-law Marsha Lanza revealed over the weekend: 'Nancy had issues with
school...She battled with the school district.
'I'm not
100 per cent certain if it was behavior, learning disabilities, I really
don't know. But he was very, very bright. He was smart.'
Newly
revealed divorce paperwork shows that Nancy had the authority to make all
decisions regarding her son's upbringing.
The
court papers were made public on Monday and said the marriage broke down 'irretrievably'.
The divorce between Nancy and Peter Lanza was finalized in September 2009,
when Adam Lanza was 17
Lanza
enrolled in some part-time courses in Western Connecticut State University,
in nearby Danbury. Classmates there also described him as an outsider,
revealing he would sit alone at the back of the class with a hooded
sweatshirt on.
In an
evening German class, he was the youngest student there.
'We
tried to say "hi" to him every so often, and he just seemed
nervous,' classmate Dot Stasny told the Journal. 'He didn't have anybody to
connect with because we were all older.'
He soon
dropped out of the class. He did however excel in computer science, with an A
and an A-minus in two courses in summer 2008, when he was just 16, according
to Paul Steinmetz, a university spokesman.
He said
the university had no record of any disciplinary issues with the part-time
student. he wasn't pursuing a college degree and had a final grade-point
average of 3.26.
Police
are currently searching the hard drive of two computers take from the
killer's home which were smashed into pieces.
Nancy
Lanza told a friend she feared she was losing her son just a week before he
shot her multiple times in the face.
Though
his former classmates describe him as a 'computer geek', he strangely had no
online presence on popular social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.
Details
on the man behind Friday's monstrous act remain maddeningly scarce as small
tidbits of information are slowly being revealed by the few people who knew
him - though he had no friends to speak of.
Those
few who spoke with the deeply disturbed young man described him as shy,
intelligent, and a masochist.
It seems
Lanza went from meek fresh-faced schoolboy to a home-schooled loner who hurt
himself so that he could 'feel something'.
At his
most innocent, Lanza is described as a mild-mannered student in high school,
making the honor roll, and living with his mother Nancy, who in turn loved
playing dice games and decorating their upscale home for the holidays.
He also
suffered from Asperger's syndrome and was painfully shy and awkward, former
classmates said.
But a
troubling portrait has emerged of the 'Goth' loner, who dressed all in black
and was obsessed with video games.
Not long
before the shooting at Sandy Hook, Nancy Lanza expressed concerns that her
troubled young son was spiraling out of control.
An
anonymous friend said Nancy had confided he was 'getting worse' over craft
beers just days before the shooting.
'I don't
know. I'm worried I'm losing him,' the friend quoted her as saying.
The
friend added that Nancy believed her son was hurting himself.
'Nancy
told me he was burning himself with a lighter. In the ankles or arms or
something,' he recalled of a conversation they had roughly one year ago. 'It
was like he was trying to feel something.'
'I asked
her if she was getting him help and she said she was,' the friend recalled.
It has
also been reported that Nancy had decided to move to Washington State or
North Carolina so that Adam could attend a college in another state.
Nancy
had recently been considering moving Adam to Washington state, said Mark
Tambascio, a restaurant proprietor and close family friend, because she had
discovered a school she thought would be good for him.
'They were
going to move out there together,' he told the Washington Post. 'She was
willing to uproot her. Nancy pretty much made it clear that she needed to be
with him [Adam] because he couldn't handle being on his own.
'He was
her whole life. She was very proud of both of her sons. She never mentioned
that [Adam] was suicidal or violent. Nothing like that. Everyone that had
spent any time around him, they knew he was a little bit different, but you
never saw any major, major issues, he added.
Some
other friends of Nancy spoke to NBC this morning, telling Savannah Guthrie:
'Adam was calm, withdrawn, typical of someone who has Asperger’s. But she
never feared him. She was devoted to both her sons.
Adam and
his needs came first.'
Another
friend Ellen said: 'Adam would isolate himself and [Nancy] was conscious of
how she would react to him. She was a kind and caring friend.
'She
taught Adam how to shoot to teach him that guns had to be treated with
respect and would absolutely have had them under lock and key.'
They
also recalled a time when Adam was ill, he didn't want his mother to be in
his room with him. So she slept outside the door on the carpet all night.
He
called out to her frequently to make sure she was there but he didn’t want
her to be too close.
Nancy
was his first victim when the 20-year-old began his rampage by shooting her
face multiple times in the family’s $1.6 million home in
Newtown, Connecticut,
dubbed America’s 'safest town'.
He then
then took three of her guns and drove her black Honda Civic to Sandy Hook
Elementary School around 9.30am, where he killed 20 young children and six
adults before shooting himself in the head.
Lanza
used two semi-automatic pistols, a Glock and Sig Sauer, and wiped out an
entire classroom of young children, then shot several in a second class
before taking his own life as police closed in.
Police
revealed yesterday that Adam was carrying an arsenal of ammunition big enough
to kill just about every student in the school if given enough time,
according to police.
Adam
Lanza shot himself in the head just as he heard police drawing near to the
classroom where he was slaughtering helpless children.
But now
it has been revealed he had more ammunition in the form of multiple,
high-capacity clips each capable of holding 30 bullets, raising the
possibility Lanza had planned an even deadlier massacre and was stopped
short.
'There
was a lot of ammo, a lot of clips,' said state police Lt. Paul Vance.
'Certainly
a lot of lives were potentially saved.'
The
chief medical examiner has said the ammunition was the type designed to break
up inside a victim's body and inflict the maximum amount of damage, tearing
apart bone and tissue.
Former
classmate Olivia DeVivo said she remembered Lanza talking about ‘blowing
things up’, but added: ‘I put that down to the usual talk of boys. I think he
went so unnoticed people didn’t stop to think, “There’s something going on
here – maybe he needs some kind of help?”
‘No one
is surprised. He always seemed like he was someone who was capable of that
because he didn’t really connect with our high school, with our town.’
Another
former school friend, Jamie Crespo, 19, said: ‘He used to hang with the
freaks, guys who dressed in trench coats.’
Other
students remember him walking through school dressed in black, carrying a
black briefcase.
Newtown
High School's 2010 class president Ben Federman is like the rest of his
classmates - he can barely remember Adam Lanza.
Mr
Federman, who was home from attending college at Vanderbilt University, told
MailOnline that he had heard from many graduates from the class of 2010 and
none of them can think of a single friend Lanza had.
'The
only time I ever saw him was in the hallway and he never seemed to engage
anyone. He was just focused on walking from one class to another,' Mr
Federman said.
His only
memory of the 20--year-old Lanza was the bizarre way he dressed - always in
button-down shirts that were too big for him. He also usually had pens in his
shirt pocket and usually carried a black leather briefcase.
'You
noticed that because it was different. He carried a briefcase and not a
backpack,' Mr Federman said.
Shooter's Persona Drew
Concern at School
Not long
into his freshman year, Adam Lanza caught the attention of Newtown High
School staff members, who assigned him a high-school psychologist, while
teachers, counselors and security officers helped monitor the skinny,
socially awkward teen, according to a former school official.
A
high-school yearbook photo shows Adam Lanza, third from the right, as part of
the technology club.
Churches
in and around Newtown, Conn., held vigils and special services to help
comfort those affected by the shootings that took place at Sandy Hook
Elementary School. Video by WSJ's Evan Simon.
Both
members of the community and visitors in and around Newtown, Conn., are
erecting makeshift memorials to honor the victims of the shooting spree on
Friday at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
Their
fear wasn't that he was dangerous. "It was completely the
opposite," said Richard J. Novia, the director of security at Newtown
School District at the time in 2007. "At that point in his life, he
posed no threat to anyone else. We were worried about him being the victim or
that he could hurt himself."
Long
before Mr. Lanza allegedly killed his mother and then blasted his way into a
Connecticut elementary school on a rampage that left 27 dead, authorities
were concerned about a young man who was unusually withdrawn and socially
maladroit. The scrawny teenager with a mop of brown hair evoked feelings of
sympathy, not fear, from teachers and the few classmates who even noticed
him.
Authorities
have declined to discuss a motive for the shootings, and those who knew Mr.
Lanza, 20 years old, said they are at a loss to even speculate. Marsha
Moskowitz, a retired school-bus driver, said Mr. Lanza stood out simply
because he never smiled. "He was so quiet," she said.
Much
remained unknown about Mr. Lanza on Sunday, including whether he had ever
been diagnosed with a mental-health illness or if he had graduated with
classmates at Newtown High School.
Few
remember him well, though he showed some academic promise, making the honor
roll as a freshman, joining a technology club and taking college-level
courses at age 16.
Friends
and acquaintances of his mother, Nancy Lanza, a gun enthusiast who grew up in
rural New Hampshire and took her kids to target practice, said she rarely
spoke about Adam, her younger son. But when she did, there were indications
their relationship was fraught.
"It
got to the point where she did not have a close relationship with her
son," said Dan Holmes, a local landscaper who worked on her property and
who would see her from time to time at a local bar in town called My Place.
But
another friend of Ms. Lanza's, Tom Phillips, said she was a devoted mother
who doted on her youngest son, Adam. "She said he was special, that he
required a little extra attention," Mr. Phillips said.
Others
who knew the family said Mr. Lanza wasn't close with his older brother, Ryan,
24, who lives in Hoboken, N.J., and works for Ernst & Young. Mr. Lanza's
parents divorced in 2009 after a long separation, according to public records
and family members. Adam Lanza's father, Peter, who lives in Stamford, is a
tax director and vice president for GE Financial Services.
In a
statement released Saturday night, Peter Lanza said the family is
"heartbroken" and "in a state of disbelief," the
Associated Press reported.
After
the divorce, Adam Lanza remained with his mother in their upscale Newtown
home.
His high
school classmates took little notice of Mr. Lanza, but school officials did.
Newtown school officials assigned a permanent psychologist to Mr. Lanza in
his freshman year of high school in 2007, and flagged him to the school's
security chief when he was still in middle school, a former school official
said. "He was very withdrawn and meek," said Mr. Novia, who left
the district in 2008. He said Mr. Lanza "was one of those freshmen
coming in very much in need of watching."
Mr.
Novia said it wasn't unusual for school officials to meet about troubled
students, but Mr. Lanza's problems were more severe than most. He said he
told the school's three security staffers who reported to him to carefully
monitor Mr. Lanza, concerning "where he was, who he was with, and what
he was doing."
To help
Mr. Lanza become more socially adept, school officials directed him to a
"tech club," a broadcast class that filmed school events for a
public access channel in town. While many students thrived there, Mr. Novia
said Mr. Lanza didn't—even though his older brother, Ryan, had done well in
the same group.
At
Western Connecticut State University, in nearby Danbury, Mr. Lanza took
classes, but he was also an outsider there. In an introductory German course
in spring 2009, two classmates recalled him sitting alone, towards the back
of the class, often in a hooded sweatshirt. It was an evening course, and Mr.
Lanza was the youngest person there.
"We
tried to say 'hi' to him every so often, and he just seemed nervous,"
classmate Dot Stasny said. "He didn't have anybody to connect with
because we were all older."
At one
point, a friend of Ms. Stasny and another classmate, Gretchen Olson, invited
Mr. Lanza to join them at a bar after class, Ms. Olson said.
"No,
I can't, I'm 17," Mr. Lanza responded, according to Ms. Olson. "We
were like, 'Oh, OK,' and then he went home."
Mr.
Lanza dropped out of that class, and the professor, Renate Ludanyi, didn't
remember him when asked by a reporter, but found his name in her records. He
received a D on one test, she said.
Mr.
Lanza excelled in computer science, with an A and an A-minus in two courses
in summer 2008, when he was just 16, according to Paul Steinmetz, a
university spokesman. During the following term, in "Philosophy 101:
Introduction to Ethical Theory," Mr. Lanza got a C.
John J.
Blom, whom university records show taught that course, said he had no
recollection of Mr. Lanza.
Mr.
Steinmetz said the university had no record of any disciplinary issues with
Mr. Lanza, who studied as a part-time student and wasn't pursuing a degree.
The last classes he took in 2009 were "American History Since
1877," in which he received an A-minus, and an introductory
macroeconomics course, in which he received a B. His final grade-point
average was 3.26.
Mr.
Lanza's history professor declined to speak, according to Burton Peretti,
history department chairman. "They certainly were shocked" to
realize Mr. Lanza had been in the class, Mr. Peretti said of the professor.
History
classes have around 40 students, Mr. Peretti said. Other history professors
said it would have been possible for Mr. Lanza to get a high grade without
saying much of anything if his written work was strong.
Ms.
Stasny also remembers Mr. Lanza as an occasional customer at a local branch
of GameStop, GME -0.88% the videogame retailer, where she worked.
"He
was one of those customers that came in, got his stuff and left," she
said.
'HE IS GETTING WORSE':
GUNMAN'S MOTHER TOLD FRIEND OF HER FEARS LESS THAN A WEEK BEFORE BLOODY
RAMPAGE THAT BEGAN WHEN HE SHOT HER MULTIPLE TIMES IN THE HEAD
Just
days before Adam Lanza would begin a bloody rampage beginning with shooting
her multiple times in the head, mother Nancy Lanza confided that 'she was
losing him' and that 'he was getting worse.'
An
anonymous drinking buddy said Nancy made the remarks in a disturbing
conversation over craft beers at a bar called My Place in Newtown, Conn.
The
friend asked not to be named by press.
On
Friday morning Adam shot Nancy Lanza, 54, several times in the head before
his horrifying
Cold
blood: Adam Lanza opened fire on Friday morning at Sandy Hook Elementary
School, murdering 26 people at the school before turning the gun on himself.
rampage
at Sandy Hook Elementary School, killing 20 children and six others.
The
friend knew Adam had been troubled, and he rarely came up in conversation,
with Nancy preferring instead to talk about son Ryan if she discussed her
children.
The
friend said they knew Adam was prone to hurting himself.
'She
just looked down at the glass and said, 'I don't know. I'm worried I'm losing
him,' the friend told the Daily News.
'She
said it was getting worse. She was having trouble reaching him.'
It
wasn't the first time Nancy told him something was wrong with her son.
'Nancy
told me he was burning himself with a lighter. In the ankles or arms or
something,' he recalled of a conversation they had roughly one year ago. 'It
was like he was trying to feel something.'
With
Adam now dead and the nation mourning his victims, Nancy words earlier in the
week seem foreboding, the friend said.
'It was
weird. She never really talked about (Adam),' he said. 'She mainly talked
about her oldest kid (Ryan). I knew about the other one but she never spoke
much about him.
'She
looked disturbed. She was looking down at her glass and kind of talking
slowly.'
The
friend never met Adam.
'I asked
her if she was getting him help and she said she was,' the friend recalled.
'Adam
learned how to shoot a rifle by the time he was 9 years old,' said the
friend. 'They would go to the range.'
Nancy
was always careful with her firearms.
'Nancy
was a responsible gun owner,' the friend said. 'It was important that she
teach her son how to responsibly use a firearm.'
And she
had a strained relationship with her ex-husband, Peter Lanza.
'She
didn't talk about him a lot. But I knew they didn't get along," the
friend said. 'I don't think she ever saw him.'
Read
more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2250326/Adam-Lanza-afraid-mother-planning-involuntarily-committed-psychiatric-home-targeted-children-loved-loved-him.html
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