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Details about Sandy Hook shooting released in report, no motive

Investigators have released a long-awaited report on the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School, nearly a year after tragedy.  A copy of the report can be viewed hereIn addition to the more than 40 page investigative summary released by Danbury State's Attorney Stephen Sedensky, a supplemental report was released. 

 

The report did not determine a motive for the attack. Physical evidence consists of more than seven-hundred individual files that include reports, statements, interviews, videos, laboratory tests and results, photographs, diagrams, search warrants and returns, as well as evaluations of those items.

 

The supplemental report included 29 documents, mostly warrants issued by the court.  Among them were warrants for the detailed call logs of several phone numbers issued to the gunman and his mother.

 

The previously released search warrants from their Yogananda Street home were included in the report.  They included an inventory of sorts of weapons confiscated from the house.  Information about computers and gaming systems were also included.  Also included was a warrant that detailed personal items in the home like a check to the gunman from his mother so he could purchase a gun.

 

Adam Lanza may have hinted at his deadly plans online in the days before last year's shooting.  In documents that were part of a report released Monday, authorities say a Texas woman contacted Hartford police the day of the December 14th attack to say her son had interacted with someone while playing a videogame 20 hours earlier who said there would be a school shooting.  It isn't clear whether she contacted authorities before or after the massacre.

 

Two days before the shooting, an anonymous user posted comments online saying that they planned to commit suicide December 14th and that it would make the news. The poster said they lived in Connecticut.

 

The information came from an application for a search warrant for Lanza's computer. Authorities say that the computer's hard drive had been smashed and that nothing usable was obtained.  Other information about Lanza's online gaming habits were discussed in warrants for information from "World of Warcraft" and "Combat Arms".

 

Documents show the shooter wrote a violent book in the fifth grade that included passages in which a character shoots his mother in the head.  The homemade manuscript titled "The Big Book of Granny" was among items seized from Lanza's home.  He fatally shot his mother in the head, then drove to the school, carried out the killings and committed suicide.

 

The documents say the main character in Lanza's book has a gun in her cane and shoots people. There's nothing to indicate Lanza ever handed the book in at school.  The son character sinks his mother to the bottom of the ocean with a "cement floatation device." Another character likes hurting people, especially children.

 

The report indicates that nearly six minutes passed between the arrival of the first police officer and the time local officers entered the school.  Two other officers then arrived at the school, and gunshots were heard in the background.  The last gunshot officers heard, which is believed to be the suicide shot by Lanza, was heard at three seconds past 9:40.

 

Sedensky wrote that police entered the building believing someone could be there ready to take their lives as well.  He also acknowledges and thanks the staff of the Sandy Hook Elementary School who acted heroically. "The combination saved many children’s lives."

 

One staff member who was injured by gun shots crawled back into a conference room and held the door shut, according to the report, calling 911 and also turned on the school wide intercom system. Sedensky says this appears to have been done inadvertently, but provided notice to other portions of the building.  Other staff members in the main office also called 911, but were not spotted by the gunman.

 

Among the documents in the supplemental report was one that included many redactions.  It described the lobby, hallway, conference room and one first grade classroom.  The document also included ballistic reports.  Another document detailed the weapons brought to the school, how many ammunition rounds were left unused and trajectory of the suspected suicide shot.

 

The report says that the gunman had an obsession with mass murders but that investigators did not discover any evidence he had indicated to others an intention to carry out such a crime.  The summary of the investigation said the shooter  was obsessed in particular with the April 1999 shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado.

 

There was a supplemental document that had details from a GPS unit seized from the home.  On Thursday December 13, 2012, one route started and returned to the house and lasted less than half an hour.  The route tracked the vehicle to Chimney Swift, which goes by Sandy Hook Elementary School.

 

The report does not include the full evidence file of Connecticut State Police, which is believed to total thousands of pages.

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Joe Pags

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