Editorial: Sandy Hook's key answers remain elusive
Authorities say Adam Lanza shot his mother to death inside their Newtown home on Dec. 14, 2012 before driving to Sandy Hook Elementary School, where he massacred 20 first-graders and six educators. He killed himself as police arrived. Credit: AP/NBC News
A long-awaited Connecticut state prosecutor's report on the Sandy Hook massacre arrived Monday, full of information but lacking in answers. What we wanted was someone or something to blame, along with an assurance that this killing spree could have been stopped: Here's why it happened, and here's how to prevent the next one. This report, detailed as it is, provides little of that.
Adam Lanza, 20 years old when he killed his mother, six other adults, 20 first-graders and himself last December, came off as odd to nearly everyone who knew him, yet no one saw any signs that he presented a danger to himself or others. He played shoot-'em-up video games, but lots of people do. He also played nonviolent video games.
He didn't have friends, or enemies. His computer activity showed he was interested in mass murders, but how was anyone to know what he'd been reading on his computer? He liked to target-shoot with his mom's guns, and ones she bought for him, but that's not so rare.
You can argue that his mother should have been more alert to her son's issues. Even though their bedrooms were on the same floor of their home, he communicated with her only via email for their final three months, refusing to speak to her. She described him as having no emotions, and fretted that he would not seek counseling or medication. She catered to his obsessions in the way she prepared his food, did his laundry, arranged the house and structured her life. She loved him, and saw no evil in him, and she's not much different from many parents who don't know how to respond to their children's issues.
It's now clear Lanza was the kind of person capable of mass murder, but only because he committed it. Absent that evidence, the danger wasn't apparent, which suggests the massacre wasn't preventable. That's the answer, at times like this, we least want to hear.
