Really? Are you kidding me? You didn’t know this guy was crazy? Maybe he wasn’t crazy when he was little but the proof is in the pudding! He didn’t kill people when he was little! He killed them after he got crazy looking! Where the hell were his parents during his formative years. Shouldn’t one of them have said to the other, “Hey, honey, have you noticed that Adam is looking a little crazy lately?” There is an old saying that goes, “If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.” Have you ever heard it? Substitute the word “whacko” for “duck.” Whether the parents ever heard it or not, they have to look into a mirror and admit they failed those who their son killed!
Adam Lanza shot and killed 20 first-graders and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, on December 14, 2012, before shooting himself.
Adam and his mother, Nancy Lanza, lived in Sandy Hook, 5 miles from the elementary school where he killed 20 innocent, young, fun-loving, just-starting-life children. He did not have a criminal record and had access to guns 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.
Lanza attended Sandy Hook Elementary School for four and a half years. He started at Newtown Middle School in 2004, but according to his mother was “wracked by anxiety.” She told friends her son started getting upset at middle school because of frequent classroom changes during the day. The movement and noise were too stimulating and made him anxious. At one point his anxiety was so intense she took him to the emergency room at Danbury Hospital. In April 2005, she moved him to a new school, St. Rose of Lima, where he lasted only eight weeks.
At age 14, he went to Newtown High School, where he was named to the honor roll in 2007. Students and teachers who knew him in high school described Lanza as “intelligent but nervous and fidgety.” He avoided attracting attention and was uncomfortable socializing. He is not known to have had any close friends in school. Schoolwork often triggered his underlying sense of hopelessness and by 2008, when he turned 16, he was only going to school occasionally. The intense anxiety Lanza experienced at the time suggested his autism was exacerbated by the hormonal shifts of adolescence. He was taken out of high school and home-schooled by his mother and father. He earned a GED. In 2008 and 2009, he also attended some classes at Western Connecticut State University.
Lanza actually had developmental challenges before the age of three. These included communication and sensory difficulties, socialization delays, and repetitive behaviors. He was seen by the New Hampshire “Birth to Three” intervention program and referred to special education preschool services. Once at elementary school, he was diagnosed with a sensory-processing disorder which does not have official status by the medical community as a formal diagnosis but is a common characteristic of autism. His anxiety affected his ability to attend school and in eighth-grade he was placed on “homebound” status: This is for children who are too disabled, even with supports and accommodations, to attend school.
When he was 13, Lanza was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome by a psychiatrist, Paul Fox. At 14 his parents took him to Yale University’s Child Study Center, where he was also diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder. He frequently changed clothes 20 times a day so his mother was often doing laundry three times a day. He sometimes went through a box of tissues in a day because he could not touch a doorknob with his bare hand.
Continuing to be treated by Robert King, he recommended extensive support be put in place and prescribed the antidepressant Celexa. He 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.” He never took the medication again. A report from the Office of the Child Advocate found Yale’s recommendations for extensive special education supports, ongoing expert consultation, and rigorous therapeutic supports embedded into (Lanza’s) daily life went largely unheeded.
In a 2013 interview, Peter Lanza said he suspected his son might have also suffered from undiagnosed schizophrenia in addition to his other conditions. Lanza’s father said family members might have missed signs of the onset of schizophrenia and psychotic behavior during his son’s adolescence because they mistakenly attributed his odd behavior and increasing isolation to Asperger syndrome.
Because of concerns published accounts of Lanza’s autism could result in a backlash against others with the condition, autism advocates campaigned to clarify autism is a brain-related developmental disorder and not a mental illness. The violence Lanza demonstrated in the shooting is generally not seen in the autistic population and none of the psychiatrists he saw detected troubling signs of violence in his disposition [author underlining added: so you see this and understand an autistic person should not be blamed for something they didn’t do!].
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 who 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.”
Investigators found Lanza was fascinated with mass shootings, most notably the Columbine High School massacre and the Northern Illinois University 2008 shooting. Among the clippings found in his room, there was a story from The New York Times about a man who shot at schoolchildren in 1891. His computer contained two videos of gunshot suicides, movies showing school shootings, and two pictures of Lanza pointing guns at his own head.
This only came to light after Lanza died, because he never permitted others to access his bedroom, including his mother. Lanza had also taped over the windows with black plastic garbage bags to block out sunlight. He had cut off contact with both his father and brother in the two years before the shooting and at one point communicated with his mother, who lived in the same house, only by email. A document titled “Selfish,” about the inherent selfishness of women, was found on Lanza’s computer after his death.<10>
CITED REFERENCES
10. Wikipedia contributors, “Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Hoo ... l_shooting (accessed April 4, 2019).
