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| Parents leave a staging area after being reunited with their children following a shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. where authorities say a gunman opened fire, leaving 27 people dead, including 20 children, Friday, Dec. 14, 2012. |
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The man suspected of killing his mother and then gunning down more than two dozen people Friday at the Connecticut elementary school where she taught may have suffered from a personality disorder, law enforcement officials said.
Adam Lanza killed
his mother at their home before driving her car to Sandy Hook Elementary
School with three weapons - two handguns and a .223-caliber rifle - and
carrying out the massacre and killing himself, officials said.
Investigators were trying to learn as much as possible about the
20-year-old and questioned his older brother, who is not believed to
have any involvement in the rampage.
So far, authorities have not spoken publicly of any possible motive. Witnesses said the shooter didn't utter a word.
Adam
Lanza and his mother, Nancy, lived in a well-to-do part of Newtown, a
prosperous community of 27,000 people about 60 miles northeast of New
York City.
A grandmother of the suspect - who
is also the mother of the slain teacher - was too distraught to speak
when reached by phone at her home in Brooksville, Fla.
"I
just don't know, and I can't make a comment right now," Dorothy Hanson,
78, said in a shaky voice as she started to cry. She said she hadn't
heard anything official about her daughter and grandsons. She declined
to comment further and hung up.
Adam Lanza's
older brother, 24-year-old Ryan Lanza of Hoboken, N.J., was being
questioned, a law enforcement official said. He told authorities that
his brother was believed to suffer from a personality disorder and be
"somewhat autistic" and lived with his mother in Connecticut, the
official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not
authorized to speak on the record about the unfolding investigation.
Ryan
Lanza had been extremely cooperative and was not under arrest or in
custody, but investigators were still searching his computers and phone
records. Ryan Lanza told law enforcement he had not been in touch with
his brother since about 2010.
Brett Wilshe, a
friend of Ryan Lanza's, said he sent him a Facebook message Friday
asking what was going on and if he was OK. According to Wilshe, Lanza's
reply was something along the lines of: "It was my brother. I think my
mother is dead. Oh my God."
Adam Lanza
attended Newtown High School, and several local news clippings from
recent years mention his name among the school's honor roll students.
A
neighbor in Newtown, Rhonda Cullens, said she knew Nancy Lanza from
monthly get-togethers the neighborhood women had a few years back for
games of bunco, a dice game.
"She was a very nice lady," Cullens said. "She was just like all the rest of us in the neighborhood, just a regular person."
Cullens
recalled that Lanza liked to garden and to make her house look nice for
the holidays. Lanza joked, though, that no one noticed because the
house was out of view, up a hill, she said.
Sandeep
Kapur, who lives two doors down from the Lanza family in Newtown, said
he did not know them and was unaware of any disturbances at the Lanza
house in the three years that he and his family have been in the
neighborhood.
He described the area as a
subdivision of well-tended, 15-year-old homes on lots of an acre or
more, where many people work at companies like General Electric, Pepsi
and IBM. Some are doctors, and his next-door neighbor is a bank CEO,
said Kapur, a project manager at an information technology firm.
"The
neighborhood's great. We have young kids, and they have lots of
friends," he said. "If you drive past this neighborhood, it gives you a
really warm feeling."
