US Shooting: Gunman learned to shoot from ‘gun-collecting mom’

Washington: The Connecticut elementary school shooter Adam Lanza had learned to shoot from his gun-collecting mom.

“Mother Nancy Lanza often took her kids target shooting, landscaper Dan Holmes said, adding: “That was a passion”. “The whole family would go together. Her 20-year-old son Adam killed her with one of her own guns before using them to murder 20 children at the elementary school where she once worked,” Holmes added. According to the New York Daily News, people who knew him said that Lanza, 20, was a ticking time bomb. “This was a deeply disturbed kid,” a family insider said, adding: “He certainly had major issues. He was subject to outbursts from what I recall.” Lanza, who friends and officials said suffered from Asperger’s syndrome or a personality disorder, had a tortured mind. He was socially awkward and at times unstable, but also extraordinarily bright, they said. “He was smart,” the insider said, adding: “He was like one of these real brainiac computer kind of kids.” A “longtime” family friend said Lanza had a condition “where he couldn’t feel pain.” “A few years ago when he was on the baseball team, everyone had to be careful that he didn’t fall because he could get hurt and not feel it,” the friend said, adding: “Adam had a lot of mental problems.” According to the report, Lanza’s strange behavior was well-known among his well-heeled neighbors in leafy Newtown, Connecticut. “Adam Lanza has been a weird kid since we were 5 years old,” a neighbor and former classmate named Tim Dalton wrote on Twitter. “As horrible as this was, I can`t say I am surprised . . . Burn in hell, Adam,” he added. Lanza was living with his devoted mother, Nancy, in the family’s four-bedroom, 3,100-square-foot estate, the report said. Nancy Lanza, 54, whom Adam murdered inside the home the two shared, reportedly had worked at Sandy Hook Elementary School. But more recently, she was taking care of her son. “She needed to be home with Adam,” the family insider said. Nancy was known as a pillar of the community, while neighbors viewed her troubled son as a terror, the report added. ANI