A day after a lone attacker went on a shooting spree at a Connecticut school killing 20 kids and six adults, US police and law enforcement agents were today trying to establish the motive behind his actions and questioned his elder brother and father.
Initially, local media reports and law enforcement agents had identified the gunman as 24-year old Ryan Lanza, who
eventually turned out to be the elder brother of the attacker Adam Lanza.
20-year-old Adam, after killing his mother at home, opened indiscriminate fire in the Sandy Hook Elementary School
in Newtown and gunned down 20 children aged between 5 and 10 as well as six adults, including the institute’s Principal.
Adam, who was wearing black combat gear and armed with semi-automatic pistol and a semi-automatic rifle, later died
from a self-inflicted gun shot wound, law enforcement agents said.
He was found dead inside the school building.
As news of the shooting broke, Ryan wrote on his Facebook page that he was being wrongly identified as the gunman.
I’m on the bus home now it wasn’t me… It wasn’t me I was at work it wasn’t me (sic),” the elder Lanza said.
Adam’s mother Nancy was a teacher at the school where the shooting occurred, media reports said.
The New York Times said he had first killed her in her apartment before gunning down 26 people at the school.
Connecticut Police spokesman Paul Vance told reporters outside the scene of shooting that Adam drove to the school
where he opened fire in two classrooms located in one section of the building. He was carrying three guns, including a Sig Sauer pistol and a .223-caliber rifle, which was found in the back of a car.
FBI agents interviewed his brother Ryan in New Jersey’s Hoboken area as well his father Peter Lanza, who was divorced from his mother.
Yesterday’s incident came less than two weeks before Christmas and is being considered the US’ second-deadliest
school shooting. Earlier in 2007, a gunman had killed 32 people in a massacre in Virginia Tech.
—————————-AFP