ADAM LANZA WAS obsessed with the infamous Columbine shooting, but a report has not established the motive behind his deadly attack on a school in Newtown, Connecticut where he shot dead 26 people, including 20 young children, nearly a year ago.
A report produced by the state’s prosecutor Stephen Sedensky III has found that 20-year-old Lanza was obsessed with the mass shooting at Columbine High School in 1999 where 15 people, including the two teenage shooters, died.
However no motive has been established for the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School on the morning of 14 December last in which 20 first-graders and six teachers were killed with a semi-automatic rifle.
Lanza also shot and killed his mother inside their home before driving to the school. He eventually took his own life with a handgun as police arrived.
“The obvious question that remains is: ‘Why did the shooter murder twenty-seven people, including twenty children?’ Unfortunately, that question may never be answered conclusively,” the report said today.
Sedensky said there was no clear indication why Lanza chose Sandy Hook other than the fact that it was close to his home where he had earlier that day shot his mother as she slept in her bed.
The report found that nearly six minutes passed between the arrival of the first Newtown police officer and the time local officers entered the school.
The first officer arrived behind the school at 9:39am after the shooting was reported. Two other Newtown officers then arrived at the school, and gunshots were heard in the background.
The last gunshot officers heard, believed to Lanza’s suicide shot, was heard at three seconds past 9:40. The report says Newtown officers entered the school at 47 seconds past 9:44am
Sedensky said that law enforcement officers were operating under the belief there may have been more than one shooter. But the report found that Lanza acted alone.
The report said Lanza had “significant mental health issues”. In 2005, he was diagnosed with Asperger’s disorder but “what contribution this made to the shootings, if any, is unknown.”
Lanza “was undoubtedly afflicted with mental health problems; yet despite a fascination with mass shootings and firearms, he displayed no aggressive or threatening tendencies,” Sedensky wrote.
Connecticut State Police lead children from the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown (Image: Newtown Bee, Shannon Hicks/AP).
Other notable findings in the 48-page report include:
Donna Soto, the mother of slain teacher Victoria Soto, said in a statement that nothing could make sense of the shooting.
"Yes, we have read the report, no, we cannot make sense of why it happened. We don't know if anyone ever will," Soto wrote.
"We don't know if we will ever be whole again, we don't know if we will go a day without pain, we don't know if anything will ever make sense again."
Sedensky has gone to court to fight release of the 911 tapes from the school and has so far resisted calls from Connecticut's governor to divulge more information sooner.
The withholding of 911 recordings, which are routinely released in other cases, has been the subject of a legal battle between The Associated Press and Sedensky before the state's Freedom of Information Commission, which ruled in favor of the AP, and now Connecticut's court system.
Superior Court Judge Eliot Prescot said earlier that he will listen to the 911 recordings from the school before ruling on whether they can be publicly released.
- with reporting from the Associated Press
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say