Days before her son went on a deadly shooting rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Nancy Lanza confided in friends that she knew her troubled child "was getting worse," the New York Daily News reported.
A longtime friend of Nancy Lanza's from a local watering hole she frequented revealed that shortly before Adam Lanza's horrific attack - the second deadliest school shooting ever - Nancy told him she was afraid "she was losing him." He added that Adam Lanza had long been struggling, but rarely came up in his conversations with Nancy.
"She just looked down at the glass and said, 'I don't know. I'm worried I'm losing him,'" said the unnamed friend of his conversation with Nancy Lanza at Newtown, Conn. bar My Place.
"She said it was getting worse. She was having trouble reaching him."
Twenty-year-old Adam Lanza reportedly shot his mother, 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., 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.
Adam, who fatally shot 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary, was prone to harming himself, Nancy Lanza's friend added, said the Daily News.
"Nancy told me he was burning himself with a lighter. In the ankles or arms or something," he said of a conversation they had around one year ago. "It was like he was trying to feel something."
After the tragic events of Dec. 14 the conversation with Nancy Lanza carries an ominous foreboding, the friend said.
"It was weird. She never really talked about (Adam)," he said. "She mainly talked about her oldest kid (Ryan). I knew about the other one, but she never spoke much about him."
"She looked disturbed. She was looking down at her glass and kind of talking slowly," he added.
Nancy's sunken demeanor that night was totally unlike the women her friends knew, the man said.
"You have to know Nancy to know how weird that was," he said. "She was just always so full of life."
The friend remembers Nancy as a devoted, caring mother who would have done anything for her son, and recalled her mentioning she was seeking treatment for him.
"I asked her if she was getting him help, and she said she was," the friend recalled.
"She was a strong, kind, caring and loving person," said John Tambascio, the co-owner of My Place. "There was nothing odd or weird about her."
The other owner of the bar, Mark Tambascio, said Nancy Lanza made caring for her son her full-time job.
"She was very much involved in his life. She tried to get as much help for him as she possibly could," he said. "She didn't work at the school. She gave all her time to him."
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