'She would get very upset that he wouldn’t let her hug him:' Dysfunctional relationship of Sandy Hook gunman and his mother



Nancy Lanza portrayed as 'survivalist' who stockpiled food, water and guns

She was shot four times in the head, possibly as she slept, by her son

Collection of guns included handguns, assault rifle and two hunting rifles

Son Adam was reclusive, spending most of his time in adjoining bedrooms

Friend: Mrs Lanza 'would get very upset that he wouldn’t let her hug him'



Moved to Sandy Hook in around 1998 but Mrs Lanza and husband divorced

Funerals for the young victims held today



All schools in Ridgefield, Connecticut, were in lockdown today because of a suspicious person who might be armed, police said



The loner who massacred 26 pupils and staff at a U.S. primary school refused to hug his mother, it has been revealed.



Friend of the family Rich Collins who drank in a bar with Adam Lanza's mother Nancy said she found it hard to deal with her son's inability to express affection.



'She would get very upset that he wouldn’t let her hug him,' said Mr Collins.



'She was proud of the boys, but she would get upset about Adam not being affectionate,' he told the New York Post.

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Was he inspired by his mother? Adam Lanza, 20, shot his teacher mother Nancy before driving to her elementary school and shooting 26 people including 20 children

Nancy Lanza's home in Newtown, Connecticut, was raided after 2 pm on Friday and she was found shot dead from an apparent gunshot wound to the face

Friends and family portrayed Adam Lanza’s mother Nancy as a paranoid ‘survivalist’ who believed the world was on the verge of violent, economic collapse.

She is reported to have been struggling to hold herself together and had been stockpiling food, water and guns in the large home she shared with her 20-year-old son in Connecticut.

Mrs Lanza, 52, was a ‘prepper’ – so called because they are preparing for a breakdown in civilised society – who apparently became obsessed with guns and taught Adam and his older brother, Ryan, how to shoot, even taking them to local ranges.

That backfired horrifically on Friday when Adam Lanza began his killing spree by shooting his mother dead in bed.

He fired four bullets into her head – possibly as she slept – then took three of her guns to Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, where he killed 20 children and six staff.

Funeral: A limousine arrives at Honan Funeral Home, where the family of six-year-old Jack Pinto is holding his funeral service, in Newtown, Connecticut Difficult: Mourners weep as they leave the Honan Funeral Home after the funeral

Grieving: Mourners arrive at the Honan Funeral Home

Today all schools in Ridgefield, Connecticut, were in lockdown because of a suspicious person who might be armed, police said.

Ridgefield is about 20 miles (30 km) from Newtown, site of Friday's elementary school massacre.



'We're looking for a suspicious person at an elementary school,' said a dispatcher at the Ridgefield Police Department.



State police in Newtown were aware of the situation, and said local police was handling it.

Remembrance: Names of victims hang on a U.S. flag on a makeshift memorial in the Sandy Hook village of Newtown

Memory: Small U.S. flags adorn a large flag on a makeshift memorial on the side of Highway 84 near the Newtown

Marked: A woman carries balloons to the Abraham L. Green & Sons Funeral Home, where Sandy Hook Elementary school victim Noah Pozner's funeral will be held

Speaking after last week's tragedy Lanza’s aunt Marsha said Nancy was ‘self reliant’ and that they talked a lot about how she was preparing for the economic meltdown.

She said her former sister-in-law was meticulous about never leaving guns out, but made no secret of having an imposing firearm collection.

It included not only the two handguns and semi-automatic assault rifle used in the killings but also two traditional hunting rifles.

She would boast about them in a local bar and also showed them off to her landscape gardener.

‘She told me she liked the single-mindedness of shooting,’ said Dan Holmes, who looked after the large garden around her rambling home. He also recalled how Mrs Lanza would go target shooting with her boys ‘pretty often’.



Overcome with emotion: President Barack Obama gave a moving speech at a vigil in Newtown, Connecticut last night for victims of the Sandy Hook shooting

Mother: Out of the tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut, came a disturbing picture of Sandy Hook gunman Adam Lanza and his first victim, his mother Nancy, pictured

Disturbed: Adam Lanza (circled) at a school technology group. Fellow pupils called him a 'ghost'

Baby-faced: Adam Lanza pictured during his secondary school days. His mother taught him how to shoot

OBAMA ADDRESSES GUN RESTRICTIONS DURING VIGIL

During a vigil in Newtown, Connecticut last night for victims of the Sandy Hook shooting President Obama made several references to the prospective- and likely- legal battles that will come as politicians fight for tougher restrictions on guns in the wake of the shooting.

That said, he was clear to avoid specific plans, but took aim at the arguments made by activists who point to the Second Amendment's right to bear arms as a reason to keep guns accessible.

'Are we prepared to say that such violence visited upon our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?' he said.

A particularly poignant moment came in the speech when Mr Obama read the first names of all 20 children who died in the shooting.

'We can't accept events like this as routine. Are we really prepared to say that we're powerless in the face of such carnage?' he said, referring to the four other mass shootings that have taken place since Mr Obama was elected.

Mr Holmes revealed how Mrs Lanza – who divorced Adam’s father Peter, a wealthy senior executive at a financial services company, in 2008 – never liked people to see inside her house.

‘I would ring the bell on the front door and she would come out the side and meet me,’ he said. ‘It was a little weird. It’s stranger now thinking back on what happened.’

As for her son, he was described yesterday as a ‘ghost’ – an autistic genius, according to former school fellows, but also a ‘deeply disturbed’ young man who was so withdrawn that even many of his closest relatives hadn’t set eyes on him for years.

It emerged last night that police are trying to repair a computer hard drive which was found shattered on the floor in the killer’s bedroom but which they believe may hold vital clues to his motives.

Friends who regularly played Mrs Lanza at a dice game said they too never managed to see the inside of her home.

During 15 years of playing together at alternating homes, Mrs Lanza’s turn to host the game was always skipped, said Rhonda Collens.

Fellow players and her neighbours described her as generous but reserved, a ‘nice lady’ who loved to make small talk about their gardens.

But others noted that beneath the mellow exterior, she was highly-strung and appeared to be ‘holding herself together’.

Like Mr Holmes, they never met Adam, a reclusive youth who had few if any friends and spent most of his time in two adjoining bedrooms in the family home.

There he would spend hours on his computer, much of the time devoted to playing violent games.

Neighbours said Mrs Lanza, who grew up on a New Hampshire farm, recently took time off from a job in finance to spend more time with her troubled younger son.

Lockdown: Police officers cross the road after searching a strip mall near an elementary school, which was in a lockdown, in Ridgefield

Despite initial reports that she was a kindergarten teacher at the school her son attacked, she had no connection with it and was described by a neighbour as ‘just a stay-at-home mom’.

While her older son Ryan, 24, had a successful career in a New York finance house, there is no evidence that the 20-year-old killer ever had a job.



And despite his addiction to the computer, he kept away from social networks and had neither a Facebook page or a Twitter account.

Ryan Kraft, who babysat for Mrs Lanza when Adam was ten, said the boy was prone to serious temper tantrums. The fiercely protective Mrs Lanza insisted the babysitter never left Adam on his own for a moment, even to go to the lavatory.

But he remembered her as an ‘engaged’ mother who did her best to arrange playdates for her sons.

Marsha Lanza, the killer’s aunt, described him as a ‘nice, quiet’ and ‘very, very bright’ boy who had issues with learning.

That verdict tallies with the accounts of fellow school pupils who said he was very bright, particularly at maths, but painfully shy.

Slaughtered: The 12 little girls and eight little boys - all age six and seven - gunned down in cold blood by 'mentally disturbed' shooter at Connecticut elementary school

Funerals:The Connecticut Funeral Directors Association has announced they will start with services for six-year-olds Noah Pozner, left, and Jack Pinto, right later today

Catherine Urso said her son, who was at school with him, described him as ‘very thin, very remote and one of the goths’.

Kate Leen, who was at school with him in their early teens, added: ‘You would say ‘‘hi’’ and he would say ‘‘hi’’ back but he didn’t give you a lot to work with. He wasn’t exactly welcoming.’

Alex Israel, who was in his class at Newtown High School, said she was convinced he was a ‘genius’, adding: ‘He was always different – keeping to himself, fidgeting and very quiet. His parents – particularly his mother – reportedly drove him hard to succeed.’

Others recalled that he carried a black briefcase when everyone else had backpacks, joined a technology club, cementing his reputation as one of the school nerds, and declined to be photographed for the school yearbook.

It has also been reported than Adam Lanza's social awkwardness had caused so much concern at his high school that he was assigned a psychologist.



His school years came to an abrupt end when his mother had a dispute with local education officials and ended up having her son home-schooled.

The Lanzas moved to Sandy Hook in around 1998 but Mrs Lanza and her husband divorced ten years later amid rumours that their difficult younger son had put a heavy strain on their marriage.

She had no real need to work again after reportedly extracting $200,000 a year in support from her husband.

Traumatized students were seen being led out of the school crying and holding hands

Disbelief: The families of victims grieve near Sandy Hook Elementary School

It appears she was not only estranged from her ex-spouse but also possibly from her older son. Before he was questioned by police over his brother’s crime, Ryan Lanza claimed he had not seen Adam since 2010.

Mrs Lanza’s brother, a former police officer named James Champion, said he hadn’t seen his younger nephew in eight years.

Police say a member of Adam’s family – probably his brother – has told them he suffered from Asperger’s Syndrome, a form of autism.

Experts have insisted the condition, while prompting the sufferer to withdraw into his own world, would not be responsible on its own for making him go on a homicidal spree.

That said, the experts note that if he had mental problems, these, combined with years of social isolation, inadequacy and the easy availability of an arsenal of firearms, could have been a recipe for disaster.

Meanwhile funerals have been scheduled for seven of the US school shooting victims.



The Connecticut Funeral Directors Association has announced they will start with services for six-year-olds Noah Pozner and Jack Pinto later today.



The funeral for six-year-old Jessica Rekos is planned for tomorrow, with services for seven-year-old Daniel Barden and 27-year-old teacher Victoria Soto on Wednesday.

On Thursday six-year-old Catherine Hubbard will be laid to rest.

A private service has been planned for six-year-old British boy Dylan Hockley. No date was announced.

Lining up: People wait in line to enter Newtown High School for a memorial vigil attended by President Barack Obama

Packed house: Sharon Bertrand, center, listens with her daughter Daysha, 13, left, and son Juan, to a memorial service over a loudspeaker outside Newtown High School

This weekend a planned nativity play which featured one of the slain youngsters went ahead.



Olivia Engel, one of the children killed at Sandy Hook, was would have been an angel in her church's nativity- the evening nativity play was one of the few events running as planned in the town as church leaders and parents sought to provide something that would distract youngsters from the school tragedy.



Yesterday the possibility was raised that Adam Lanza had planned an even deadlier massacre and was stopped short.



Connecticut state police Lt. J. Paul Vance said that Lanza had 'hundreds' of bullets remaining when he killed himself in the school, and was in possession of multiple high-capacity magazines for all of the four guns he brought with him.

VIDEO More details of Adam Lanza's private life start to emerge

Memories: New London, Connecticut resident Rachel Pullen, center, kisses her son Landon DeCecco at a memorial



Pausing to reflect: A 3-year-old girl is accompanied by her father while lighting a candle outside of Newton High School while President Obama spoke at the memorial service

Remembrance: Attendees release paper lanterns during a vigil for victims of the Sandy Hook School shooting yesterday in Omaha, Nebraska

Lanza had a Bushmaster .223-caliber rifle and two handguns on his person when his dead body was found by police, and he also had a shotgun in the car parked outside of the building.

Barack Obama flew in last night to console grieving parents as demands grew for tighter gun controls in the United States.



Mr Obama also attended an evening vigil to mourn with the shellshocked community in Newtown.



He met privately with families of the 26 victims and with emergency crews who responded to the shootings before speaking at an interfaith service at the town’s high school.



Barely able to contain his emotions, the President wiped back tears and declared: ‘As a nation, we have endured far too many of these tragedies in the last few years.’

His call for ‘meaningful action’ in the wake of the shootings reignited the fierce gun law debate and raised an expectation among weapon control advocates that Mr Obama will seek changes.





