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| Shop owners Tamara Doherty, left, and Jackie Gaudet, right, meet outside their stores for the first time since being neighbors, just down the road from Sandy Hook Elementary School, Saturday, Dec. 15, 2012, in Newtown, Conn. 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. |
NEWTOWN, Conn.
(AP) -- Investigators tried to figure out what led a bright but
painfully awkward 20-year-old to slaughter 26 children and adults at a
Connecticut elementary school, while townspeople sadly took down some of
their Christmas decorations and struggled Saturday with how to go on.
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 what triggered 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 from Lanza 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 shot with a rifle, at least some of them up
close, and all of them were apparently 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.
Asked how many bullets were fired, Carver said, "I'm lucky if I can tell you how many I found."
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.
The
list of the dead was released Saturday, but in the tightly knit town,
nearly everyone already seemed to know someone who died.
Among
the dead: 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.
"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."
School
board chairwoman Debbie Leidlein spent Friday night meeting with
parents who lost children and shivered as she recalled those
conversations. "They were asking why. They can't wrap their minds around
it. Why? What's going on?" she said. "And we just don't have any
answers for them."
Authorities said Lanza had
no criminal history, and 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 the school district's head of security and adviser to the
high 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, Leidlein said - and officials are
deciding what to do about the town's other schools.
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."
