Adam Lanza, the 20-year old who tore through Sandy Hook Elementary School on a violent, murderous rampage last Friday in Newtown, Connecticut, destroyed his computer’s hard drive before the shootings, and police have been valiantly trying to recover anything from the damaged files that might give them a clue as to why he committed such a heinous act. However, it looks like we may never find out what he was doing or who he was communicating with that morning, and hope of discovering even the tiniest bit of motive is rapidly disappearing.
It appears Lanza destroyed the hard drive with a hammer or screwdriver, and the lengths he went to in order to protect his computer history have led investigators to believe there must be something worth trying to recover.
Lanza shot his mother, Nancy, to death as she lay in bed before leaving for the elementary school. With his father and brother both living out of state and even the closest friends of the family saying they rarely saw Adam, it will be difficult for law enforcement officials to glean much about his recent behavior. It’s now being reported that he suffered from a learning disability–Asperger’s Syndrome–and was isolated much of the time in the home he shared with his mother. Friends and family say he was a highly intelligent boy who spent hours on the computer and loved video games, something which is stirring the debate about violent imagery in games and the effect it has on young people.
For now, police say they won’t give up trying to extract data from the hard drive, but it’s looking like they won’t be able to come up with much. As for the survivors of the shooting, today marks the first day their peers return to school, but it hasn’t been decided yet when the Sandy Hook children will return. Their own school is still a crime scene.