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Associated Press
Elizabeth Bogdanoff, left, kisses her daughter Julia, 13, both of Newtown, Conn., during a prayer service at St John’s Episcopal Church in Newtown, Saturday, on Dec. 15, 2012. The massacre of 26 children and adults at Sandy Hook Elementary school elicited horror and soul-searching around the world even as it raised more basic questions about why the gunman, 20-year-old Adam Lanza, would have been driven to such a crime and how he chose his victims.
Saturday, Dec. 15, 2012 | 1:47 p.m.
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NEWTOWN, Conn. — Investigators on Saturday worked to understand what led a bright but painfully awkward 20-year-old to slaughter 26 children and adults at a Connecticut elementary school, while townspeople took down Christmas decorations and struggled with how to get through a holiday season that has suddenly become a time of mourning.
The tragedy brought forth soul-searching and grief around the globe. Families as far away as Puerto Rico began to plan funerals for victims who still had their baby teeth, world leaders extended condolences, and vigils were held around the U.S.
Amid the sorrow, stories of heroism emerged, including an account of the Sandy Hook Elementary School principal who lost her life lunging at the gunman, Adam Lanza, in an attempt to overpower him.
Police shed no light on the motive for the second-deadliest school shooting in U.S. history, though state police Lt. Paul Vance said investigators had found "very good evidence ... that our investigators will be able to use in painting the complete picture, the how and, more importantly, the why." He would not elaborate.
However, another law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said investigators have found no note or manifesto of the sort they have come to expect after murderous rampages such as the Virginia Tech bloodbath in 2007 that left 33 people dead.
The mystery deepened as Newtown education officials said they had found no link between Lanza's mother and the school, contrary to news reports that said she was a teacher there. Investigators said they believe Adam Lanza attended Sandy Hook Elementary many years ago, but they had no explanation for why he went there on Friday.
Lanza shot and killed his mother, Nancy Lanza, at the home they shared, then drove to the school in her car with at least three of her guns, forced his way inside and opened fire in two classrooms, authorities said. Within minutes, he killed 20 children, six adults and himself.
On Saturday, Chief Medical Examiner Dr. H. Wayne Carver said all the victims at the school were killed up close with a rifle and were shot more than once. All six adults killed at the school were women. Of the 20 children, eight were boys and 12 were girls. All the children were 6 or 7 years old.
The tragedy plunged Newtown into mourning and added the picturesque New England community of handsome colonial homes, red-brick sidewalks and 27,000 people to the grim map of towns where mass shootings in recent years have periodically reignited the national debate over gun control but led to little change.
Signs around town read, "Hug a teacher today," ''Please pray for Newtown" and "Love will get us through."
"People in my neighborhood are feeling guilty about it being Christmas. They are taking down decorations," said Jeannie Pasacreta, a psychologist who was advising parents struggling with how to talk to their children.
In the tightly knit town, nearly everyone seemed to know someone who died. Among them: well-liked Principal Dawn Hochsprung, who town officials say tried to stop the rampage and paid with her life; the school psychologist who probably would have helped survivors grapple with the tragedy; a teacher thrilled to have been hired this year; and a 6-year-old girl who had just moved to Newtown from Canada.
Authorities said Lanza had no criminal history; it was not clear whether he had a job. Lanza was believed to have suffered from a personality disorder, said a law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Another law enforcement official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said Lanza had been diagnosed with Asperger's, a mild form of autism often characterized by social awkwardness. People with the disorder are often highly intelligent. While they can become frustrated more easily, there is no evidence of a link between Asperger's and violent behavior, experts say.
The law enforcement officials insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the unfolding investigation.
Acquaintances describe the former honor student as smart but odd and remote.
Olivia DeVivo, now a student at the University of Connecticut, recalled that Lanza always came to school toting a briefcase and wearing his shirt buttoned all the way up. "He was very different and very shy and didn't make an effort to interact with anybody" in his 10th-grade English class, she said.
"You had yourself a very scared young boy who was very nervous around people," said Richard Novia, who was district's head of security and adviser to the school's Tech Club, of which Lanza was a member. He added: "He was a loner."
Novia said Lanza had extreme difficulties relating to fellow students and teachers, as well as a strange bodily condition: "If that boy would've burned himself, he would not have known it or felt it physically."
Lanza would also go through crises that would require his mother to come to school to deal with. Such episodes might involve "total withdrawal from whatever he was supposed to be doing, be it a class, be it sitting and read a book," Novia said.
When people approached Lanza in the hallways, he would press himself against the wall or walk in a different direction, clutching his black case "like an 8-year-old who refuses to give up his teddy bear," said Novia, who now lives in Tennessee.
Even so, Novia said his main concern about Lanza was that he might become a target for teasing or abuse by other students, not that he might become a threat.
"Somewhere along in the last four years there were significant changes that led to what has happened Friday morning," Novia said. "I could never have foreseen him doing that."
Sandy Hook Elementary will be closed next week — some parents can't even conceive of sending their children back, Board of Education chairwoman Debbie Leidlein said — and officials are deciding what to do about the town's other schools.
"Next week is going to be horrible," said the town's legislative council chairman, Jeff Capeci, thinking about the string of funerals the town will face. "Horrible, and the week leading into Christmas."
Asked whether the town would recover, Maryann Jacob, a clerk in the school library who took cover in a storage room with 18 fourth-graders during the shooting rampage, said: "We have to. We have a lot of children left."
"Lanza would also go through crises that would require his mother to come to school to deal with. Such episodes might involve "total withdrawal from whatever he was supposed to be doing, be it a class, be it sitting and read a book," Novia said."
America has lost its moral compass
America liberals have beget an amoral secular culture where individual responsibility is diminished. In a secular dependency society individuals are not taught responsibility and have lost perspective of right and wrong. A amoral secular America today kids are not instilled with values and ethics and do not perceive the consequences of their actions.
Everyday we are faced with new loss to personal values. Underaged teens get birth control without parental supervision, marijuana drug laws are not being enforced, nudity is widespread on TV, individuals with severe mental issues can not be legally helped, denigration religious is being systematically speared in schools
When you live in a liberal secular society with no moral code you live in a no consequence society and you the breakdown of the social community fabric
Obviously, he was bullied in this school and he finally snapped. His mother probably did nothing about the bullying, hence his action.
The real question is whether the authorities will admit this, or what spin they will put on it, to cover for the schools administration doing nothing about bullying.
CHILDHOOD SURVIVORS OF TRAUMATIC OCCURRENCES WILL REQUIRE DESENSITIZING THERAPY FOR MANY YEARS
Back in the early 1990's, there was this preteen boy here in Vegas that I got to know quite well. The parent's of this child at his age of seven had a severe domestic dispute raging amongst them over infidelities. The father made his son watch as he committed suicide.
This boy grew into his teen years, as anyone with any type of sense would expect of this child, to have his own mental health issues.
He was almost constantly in trouble at school, at home, and in the neighborhood with local authorities. No matter how wrong this child was, I always took his side. It was not that I was condoning his bad behavior, it was that I always wanted him to know that he always had a shoulder of support.
Things got worse with this young boy as his mother and her physician decided to place him on psychotropic drugs that had a high content of lithium.
The mother and I had frequent private disputes on this child being forced to take this type of medication. I believed both the mother and her doctor was turning this boy into a live form of a "human vegetable". I threatened both the mother and her physician with an investigation by authorities if they did not immediately cease these psychotropic medications.
Some months later as I was dropping off the mother at her residence after our shift work, her teenage son was terrorizing her home in a fit of rage. I told her to let him go and finish out his rage as long as he was not setting the place on fire, or harming anyone personally. I was sensitive to the fact that when adults on psychotropic's are coming off this medication they act out in rage; and for a child the lashing out is expected to be much more severe. In my eyes, the mother, and both her now deceased husband and her physician had created this so-called, childhood monster.
In the aftermath I had a long private talk with this teenage boy. I told him that in order for him to survive, he would have to leave home and never return to the place that gave him all this inner-trauma. Some months later he took my advice and left this place that was none other than a mental and physical destruction pad for him.
Now that he is an adult, I'm so proud of him. He has turned out to be such a good, responsible man, who is now a dedicated husband and father, himself.
Here is the fact; the children who survived this Connecticut massacre will grow to have some level of mental health and or social issues; it is inevitable. Bless them along the way with extremely high levels of understanding and nurturing. Leave the psychotropic drugs behind. No child should be exposed to these highly potent and dangerous drugs. Strongly consider packing up your family and moving to another location of the country where your children can grow without this horrible scourge of memory lingering within them.
Future-For the last 100 years-every generation has complained about the moral decline of the country. Give it a rest. You've got a nation with a boatload of guns & this is what happens when nutjob gets ahold of one.