Soon after he began his freshman year at Newtown High School, staff members began to worry about Adam Lanza. He was assigned a psychologist, and teachers agreed to keep a close eye on the withdrawn, friendless teen. But not because they thought Lanza was dangerous. “It was completely the opposite,” said Richard Novia, a former adviser at the school’s tech club. “We were worried about him being the victim.”
Lanza stood out from an early age, said DailyMail.co.uk. At Sandy Hook Elementary School, said a former classmate, Lanza stood alone at recess, looking angry and making “animal-like noises.” In high school, he was known as a “tech geek” who carried pens in his shirt pocket and a black briefcase. Although highly intelligent, he would shrink from teachers’ questions, and walked down corridors “pressing against the wall, almost like he was afraid of people,” said Andrew Lapple, who sat next to Lanza in homeroom. Family friends and former school officials said Lanza had Asperger’s syndrome, a high-functioning form of autism, but also a more serious psychological disorder.
Outside of school, “Lanza’s adolescence seemed to have been turbulent,” said The New York Times. He was deeply upset when his parents divorced when he was 17. Not long afterward, Lanza stopped talking to his father, Peter, and older brother, Ryan. He lived with his mother, Nancy, in their $1.6 million Newtown home, and family friends said he spent much of his time in the windowless basement, playing violent video games.
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Friends remembered Nancy, 52, as a doting mother who devoted herself to Lanza’s care and hoped he could “live a normal life,” said The Wall Street Journal. She was considering moving to Washington state so that Lanza could enroll in a “special” college there. Nancy, who owned all of the weapons used in the school massacre, often took Lanza to local shooting ranges. “Guns require a lot of respect, and she really tried to instill that responsibility within him,” said Russell Hanoman, a family friend. But less than a week before her son would kill her, Nancy confessed to a drinking buddy that Adam was becoming increasingly distant and morose. “She just looked down at the glass and said, ‘I don’t know. I’m worried I’m losing him,’” the friend said.
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