Adam Lanza

Adam Peter Lanza (April 22, 1992 – December 14, 2012) was an American mass murderer who perpetrated the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, one of the deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history. On December 14, 2012, he fatally shot his mother, Nancy Lanza, at their home in Newtown, Connecticut, before driving to Sandy Hook Elementary School, where he killed 20 children aged six and seven, and six adult staff members. He then killed himself as law enforcement arrived at the school.

Lanza was born in Exeter, New Hampshire, and grew up in Newtown, Connecticut, where he was raised primarily by his mother following his parents' divorce in 2008. From an early age, he was diagnosed with a number of neurodevelopmental conditions, including Asperger syndrome, sensory processing disorder, and obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD). He was described by those who knew him as highly intelligent but profoundly withdrawn. He struggled throughout his childhood and adolescence with social interaction and emotional regulation, and hated to be touched.

As a teenager, Lanza became increasingly isolated and stopped attending school. His anxiety led to him being placed on homebound status, where he received instruction at home rather than attending classes. His mother declined treatments recommended by the Yale Child Study Center, preferring to accommodate his preferences rather than forcing him to adapt to social environments and improving his mental health. Lanza developed an intense preoccupation with mass violence, compiling extensive research on prior shootings and maintaining a spreadsheet documenting past attacks. Lanza withdrew from social contact almost entirely in the years before the shooting.

Lanza had access to an arsenal of legally purchased firearms belonging to his mother, who was an avid gun enthusiast. Severe mental illness, social isolation, and access to weapons were all identified as contributing factors to the shooting by Connecticut state authorities and the Office of the Child Advocate. The Sandy Hook shooting led to renewed legislative efforts on gun control at both the state and federal level. Nancy Lanza's role in facilitating her son's access to firearms became a significant point of public and legal scrutiny.

Early life and education Elementary and middle school Adam Peter Lanza was born on April 22, 1992, in Exeter, New Hampshire, the second son of Peter and Nancy Lanza ( Champion). Nancy experienced hypotension and hypoglycemia among other problems during the pregnancy, and gave birth to Adam via C-section due to decreased fetal movement. The Lanza family moved to Newtown, Connecticut, after Peter started a new job at General Electric in 1998. Lanza had a pet hamster named Skippy. Nancy's house was located five miles away from Sandy Hook Elementary School. The transition to middle school—where he had to change classrooms and navigate noisy hallways—was physically and emotionally overwhelming for him. His mother reported that he experienced intense anxiety during this period. Because of the smaller class sizes, his mother moved him to a parochial school, St. Rose of Lima, in April 2005.

Lanza was named to the honor roll a few times, At age 16, while still technically a high school student, Lanza enrolled in classes at Western Connecticut State University. He maintained a 3.26 GPA on his college transcript, He earned his high school diploma from Newtown High School at age 16 through a combination of tutoring, independent learning and college classes. The couple had already been separated before the filing, with Peter living in an apartment in downtown Stamford while Nancy remained in the family home. Observers and court documents described the split as relatively amicable, with no public disputes over property or parenting. Peter agreed to a substantial alimony arrangement that provided Nancy with nearly $290,000 annually by 2012. He also committed to paying for both sons' college and graduate educations. They shared joint legal custody of Adam, who was 17 at the time of the finalization, though he lived primarily with Nancy. The agreement gave Nancy the final decision-making power if they could not agree on issues regarding Lanza.

Relationship with his mother Nancy became a housewife mother shortly after Adam was born. He had access to the guns used in the shooting through his mother, who was described as a "gun enthusiast who owned at least a dozen firearms". She often took her two sons to a local shooting range, where they learned to shoot.

After her divorce, Nancy would take vacations to leave Adam alone in the house for days at a time, hoping that it would make Adam become more independent. She went to fine restaurants, slept in hotels, was in Boston on a regular basis, and occasionally flew to England, New Orleans, and San Francisco. He communicated with his mother, Nancy, almost exclusively via email, despite living together. In the final months, he often refused to leave his room or engage with her at all. He abruptly cut off all contact with his father, Peter, in 2010 and was estranged from his older brother, Ryan. The no contact with his father may have been due to heated disagreement over whether Lanza could handle a full load of courses at Norwalk Community College. By preschool, he was diagnosed with sensory processing disorder, which made typical sights, sounds, and touch physically overwhelming for him. Sensory-processing disorder does not have official status in the medical community as a formal diagnosis, but is a common characteristic of autism. Lanza was seen by the New Hampshire Birth to Three intervention program and referred to special education preschool services.

Lanza had communication difficulties, socialization delays, and repetitive behaviors. Lanza did not speak until he was three years old. He frequently washed his hands and changed his socks 20 times a day, to the point where his mother did three loads of laundry a day. He also sometimes went through a box of tissues in a day because he could not touch a doorknob with his bare hand.

When he was 13, Lanza was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome by psychiatrist Paul Fox. His anxiety affected his ability to attend school and in 8th grade he was placed on "homebound" status, which is reserved for children who are too disabled, even with supports and accommodations, to attend school. When he was 14, his parents took him to Yale University's Child Study Center, where he was diagnosed with obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD), depression and anxiety.

Lanza received treatment from Robert King, who advised implementing comprehensive support, and Kathleen Koenig, a colleague at the Yale Child Study Center, prescribed citalopram, an antidepressant. Lanza took the medication for three days. His mother Nancy reported: "On the third morning he complained of dizziness. By that afternoon he was disoriented, his speech was disjointed, he couldn't even figure out how to open his cereal box. He was sweating profusely ... it was actually dripping off his hands. He said he couldn't think ... He was practically vegetative." A report from the Office of the Child Advocate found that "Yale's recommendations for extensive special education supports, ongoing expert consultation, and rigorous therapeutic supports embedded into (Lanza's) daily life went largely unheeded."

Lanza appears to have had no contact with mental health providers after 2006. The report from the Office of the Child Advocate stated: "In the course of Lanza's entire life, minimal mental health evaluation and treatment (in relation to his apparent need) was obtained. Of the couple of providers that saw him, only one—the Yale Child Study Center—seemed to appreciate the gravity of (his) presentation, his need for extensive mental health and special education supports, and the critical need for medication to ease his obsessive–compulsive symptoms." Lanza received no psychiatric treatment or medication after 2008, despite being impaired by anxiety and obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD). On a college admissions questionnaire, Lanza answered that he had no "documented disabling condition" and he declined to identify his gender. Peter F. Langman has also suggested that Lanza may have had undiagnosed schizophrenia, as he experienced a seemingly psychotic episode in 2010. Those advocates argued that the aggression displayed by Lanza in the shooting is not typically observed in the autistic population and none of the psychiatrists he consulted identified concerning indications of violence in his demeanor. In November 2014, a report from the Office of the Child Advocate in Connecticut stated that "Anorexia may lead to cognitive impairment, and the combination of anorexia with an autism spectrum disorder and OCD likely heightened Lanza's risk of suicide." According to medical records, Lanza was vegan since he was 13 years old and disdained the mouthfeel of some foods. The essay had an obsessive, academic tone.

According to Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) documents, Lanza also wrote an outline for a screenplay titled Lovebound which describes a relationship between a 30-year-old man and a 10-year-old boy and views that child-adult relationships could be beneficial. Lanza claimed that he was molested "at least a dozen times" by doctors during genital exams with his parents' knowledge. On reflecting on these alleged activities, Lanza opined: "I don't see how I and every child was not raped by doctors: We did not consent to it. We only did it because our parents made us". The Office of the Child Advocate report states that he "descended" into a world where his only communication with the outside world was with members of a cyber-community, "a small community of individuals that shared his dark and obsessive interest in mass murder".

Lanza never permitted others to access his bedroom, not even his own mother. Lanza had also taped black plastic garbage bags over the windows in his bedroom in order to block out sunlight. He had cut off contact with both his father and brother in the two years before the shooting. At one point, he communicated with his mother only by email, despite living in the same house together. When Hurricane Sandy struck the Northeastern U.S. in October 2012, the Lanza home was without electricity for days Lanza had two Tumblr accounts, "gayfortimk" and "queerforkimveer", named after school shooters Tim Kretschmer and Kimveer Gill. If a stranger tried to join him for a two-player game, he would walk away from the arcade machine. The unnamed witness met Lanza sometime in 2011. They sometimes played Dance Dance Revolution, watched horror movies, and went hiking together. He reported in police interviews that Lanza "was capable of laughing, smiling, and making jokes, though always in a dry fashion". In his room, investigators uncovered clippings, including a story from The New York Times detailing an incident in 1891 where a man shot at school children. His computer contained two videos of gunshot suicides, movies that showed school shootings, and two pictures of Lanza pointing guns at his own head.

Lanza was a member of what is now commonly referred to as the True Crime Community. Lanza had an account on a forum titled "Super Columbine Massacre RPG", which discusses the video game of the same name and other mass shootings. Lanza used the username "Smiggles". Investigators saw Lanza's posts on Tumblr and the Super Columbine Massacre RPG! forum as a clear indicator about Lanza's fascination with Columbine and other mass shooting incidents. In one post on the forum, Lanza describes having a dream about Columbine while he was asleep. On the Columbine forum, Lanza wrote "Serial killers are lame. Everyone knows that mass murderers are the cool kids". Authorities discovered a massive, 7-by-4-foot (2.1-by-1.2 m) spreadsheet on his computer that documented hundreds of mass murders dating back to the 1700s. It contained 17 categories, including weapon types, casualty counts, and the death of the perpetrator. Some investigators believe he was studying these cases to maximize his own lethality or to compete for a high ranking on his own list. He reportedly told an online contact in July 2012 that he only had a perfunctory interest in mass murderers and no longer cared about anything. Lanza did not have a criminal record before the shooting.

Data recovered from a portable GPS shows that Lanza was in the vicinity of the Sandy Hook Elementary School a day prior to the shooting. Reports say that he owned a portable GPS device.

Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting

On the morning before the shooting, Lanza removed the hard drive from his computer and intentionally destroyed it with a hammer or screwdriver, making it difficult for investigators to recover its data. Sometime before 9:30a.m. EST on December 14, 2012, Lanza fatally shot his mother Nancy, with a .22-caliber Savage Mark II rifle at their Newtown home. Investigators later found her body in her bed, clad in pajamas, with four gunshot wounds to her head. Shortly after 9:35a.m., armed with his mother's Bushmaster XM15-E2S rifle and ten magazines with 30 rounds each, Lanza shot his way through a glass panel next to the school's locked front entrance doors. Some of those present heard the initial shots on the school intercom system, which was being used for morning announcements. thumb

The police heard the final shot at 9:40:03a.m. They believed that it was Lanza shooting himself in the lower rear portion of his head with the Glock 20SF in a classroom he had previously opened fire in. Lanza's body was found wearing a pale green pocket vest over a black polo shirt over a black T-shirt, along with black sneakers, black fingerless gloves, black socks, and a black canvas belt.

Lanza shot all but two of his victims multiple times. Most of the shooting took place in two first-grade classrooms near the entrance of the school. The students among the victims totaled eight boys and twelve girls, all either six or seven years old, and the six adults were all women who worked at the school. Eighteen children were pronounced dead at the school and two were pronounced dead at Danbury Hospital. As of the present day, the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting is the second deadliest school shooting in U.S. history.

Possible motives for shooting While official investigations concluded that Lanza's motive may never be known, they identified several events and psychological factors that likely contributed to his decision. In messages to a fellow gamer, he wrote, "I incessantly have nothing other than scorn for humanity". However, his mental health was completely untreated after 2008, leading to a "deteriorating life of dysfunction". By the time of the attack, he was severely anorexic, which medical experts believe caused cognitive impairment and may have contributed to a possible psychotic break or a "loss of touch with reality". The FBI identified Lanza's waning relationship with his mother as a considerable stressor and hardship in his life. Nancy planned to purchase a recreational vehicle for Adam to stay in so that potential purchasers could see the house without disturbing him. The Report of the Child Advocate stated that:

An online acquaintance told the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) that Lanza felt pity for children, believing they were being improperly controlled by parents and teachers. She suspected Lanza may have viewed the killings as a way of saving or protecting them. According to the acquaintance, Lanza wrote that he liked the Harry Potter series, especially how "at the age of 11, the kids were taken away from their families".

Suicide could have been a primary motive. Langman wrote that "Lanza was profoundly unhappy about being alive". In a computer document, Lanza once wrote "killing yourself would intuitively be moral because you would not have the capacity to commit immoral deeds, which you innately do through being alive; and yet many would somehow forbid suicide as being immoral".