Days before Adam Lanza would walk into Sandy Hook Elementary school and commit the second-deadliest school shooting ever his mother was urging the reclusive 20-year-old to leave home and get out more, a family friend revealed to the New York Daily News.
The normally reserved Lanza had grown increasingly distant prior to the shooting, family friends say Adam Lanza's mother, Nancy, had revealed to them.
"He sat in his room playing video games for hours and hours," the friend said. "She thought the best thing was for him to get out of the house and into the world. To interact with people a little bit."
"He was like a ghost," the friend added.
As he'd grown increasingly anti-social, Nancy Lanza brought Adam to a psychiatrist, but her attempts to reach her son were met with indifference, friends say. Adam Lanza reportedly rejected the whole idea of pushing himself to be more social, and didn't speak to his mother in the three days before he fatally shot her.
Adam Lanza reportedly shot Nancy four times as she lay in bed Dec. 14, packed at least three of her guns, and then drove her car to the Connecticut K-4 elementary school, opening fire in two classrooms around 9:30 a.m., fatally shooting 20 children and six adults, police said. Police are still searching for a motive; witnesses said the shooter didn't utter a word.
According to police, the three guns used in the shooting were legally purchased and registered to his mother. Lanza reportedly primarily used a military-style Bushmaster .223 assault rifle during the shootings.
Investigators questioned Lanza's older brother, 24-year-old Ryan Lanza, of Hoboken, N.J., for hours Friday and searched his computers and phone records, but he told law enforcement he had not been in touch with his brother since about 2010. Police say he is not a suspect in the case.
According to numerous reports, Lanza suffered from Asperger's syndrome, a developmental disorder, which is a mild form of Autism, and was unable to physically feel pain. Numerous experts on the disorder have spoken out recently attempting to dissuade reports of the disorder's connection to Friday's horrific events.
Nancy Lanza had grown more and more concerned with Adam recently, pushing him occasionally to move out, but "he didn't want to leave," according to the friend. "He didn't understand why she wanted him to go out into the world. She told me she couldn't reach him - and she was worried."
Despite Adam Lanza's anti-social behavior, though, friends say he wasn't a violent person.
"He would start yelling and stuff like that," the friend said. "He would never hit her. He would just act like a child when he got mad. That's what she told me."
Nancy didn't set a firm deadline for her son to move out, but her concern had increased overall because Adam had recently become more "distant," was "withdrawing into himself," the friend said.
"I'm not sure that's the reason he snapped, but it's my best guess," the friend said. "I knew that that was the source of any stress between the two."
The friend added that he wouldn't be surprised if Adam Lanza's motive was never discovered.
"It makes no sense," he said. "None of this does."
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