FROM THE DOCUMENTS
— A man who dated gunman Adam Lanza’s mother, Nancy, in 2011 said she told him in an email that she had scheduled a trip to London the week of the shooting but canceled at the last minute because of “a couple last minute problems on the home front.”
— A friend of Nancy Lanza’s told investigators she had planned to sell their home in Newtown and move to Washington state or North Carolina, where she hoped Adam could get a job. She planned to buy an RV for Adam to sleep in. If they went to Washington, Nancy said, there was a special school where she planned to enroll him.
— A former teacher of Adam Lanza’s said his parents were not “up front” with teachers about his mental abilities. The teacher recalled Lanza responding to a creative writing assignment by “obsessing about battles, destruction and war.” The teacher called the level of violence “disturbing.”
Associated Press
Connecticut police released thousands of pages Friday from their investigation into the Newtown massacre, providing the most detailed and disturbing picture yet of the rampage and Adam Lanza’s fascination with murder, while also depicting school employees’ brave and clear-headed attempts to protect the children.
Included in the file were photographs of the home the 20-year-old Lanza shared with his mother. They show numerous rounds of ammunition, gun magazines, shot-up paper targets, gun cases, shooting earplugs and a gun safe with a rifle in it.
The documents’ release marks the end of the investigation into the Dec. 14, 2012, shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School that left 20 first-graders and six educators dead.
Lanza went to the school after killing his mother, Nancy, inside their home. He committed suicide with a handgun as police arrived at the school.
The documents also fill in more details about how the shooting unfolded and how staff members looked out for the youngsters.
Teacher Kaitlin Roig told police she heard “rapid-fire shooting” outside the school, near her classroom. She rushed her students into the classroom’s bathroom, pulled a rolling storage unit in front of the bathroom door as a barricade and then closed and locked the door.
Eventually, police officers slid their badges under the bathroom door. Roig refused to come out and told them that if they were truly police, they should be able to get the key to the door — which they did.
The paperwork, photos and videos were heavily edited to protect the names of children and to withhold some of the more grisly details of the crime.
In a letter accompanying the files, Reuben F. Bradford, commissioner of the state Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection, wrote that much of the report was disturbing but that it also showed teachers trying to protect their children, law enforcement officials putting themselves in harm’s way, and dispatchers working calmly and efficiently.
“In the midst of the darkness of that day, we also saw remarkable heroism and glimpses of grace,” he wrote.
In the documents, Peter Lanza, who was estranged from his son, told police that Adam had Asperger’s syndrome — a type of autism that is not associated with violence — and exhibited symptoms of being “slightly OCD,” meaning obsessive compulsive disorder.
A former Newtown High student who was in Tech Club with Adam Lanza recalled him pulling his sleeves over his hands any time he was handed an object from someone.
A nurse told police that Lanza’s mother had to do three loads of laundry each day because her son obsessively changed clothes — sometimes changing his socks 20 times daily.
Prosecutors previously issued a summary of the investigation last month that portrayed Lanza as obsessed with mass murders, but the report concluded that Lanza’s motives for the massacre might never be known.
Lanza “was undoubtedly afflicted with mental health problems; yet despite a fascination with mass shootings and firearms, he displayed no aggressive or threatening tendencies,” it said.
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