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Harrowing Sandy Hook Documents Released

by Seth Millstein

On Friday afternoon, the Connecticut Department of Emergency services released thousands of pages of documents regarding the Sandy Hook shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. The documents included 911 transcripts, crime scene photos, and childhood pictures of Adam Lanza. The documents came as part of Connecticut police’s final report on the shooting, and some of them have been “redacted according to law,” particularly when they contained identifying information about children.

The report contained a lot of biographical details about Lanza and his home life. He apparently blacked out his windows with garbage bags, was diagnosed first with autism and then with Asperger’s, and was fascinated with school shootings. He was “weirded out” by Hurricane Sandy, and refused to leave his house afterwards, forcing him and his mother to stay in their Connecticut home without power.

As Bustle reported, authorities decided to release the investigation documents two weeks after releasing 911 tapes from the shooting:

The tapes brought up a contentious debate — local officials questioning the necessity of the tapes’ release attempted to block their circulation in a court case that ultimately failed. (Despite the fact that it’s horrifying to listen to the voices of both survivors and soon-to-be-victims as gunshots peppered the background, the tapes are still considered public record.) That said, no such case has been made against the document file, however — reading the transcripts and the police reports, written in a detached, official staccato, is ultimately less intimate than audio of the shootings. And, indeed, previous reports released failed to incite anger or controversy.

One of the most harrowing of the documents was a picture of Lanza as a toddler, dressed in camouflage military garb with a gun in his mouth:

Despite these revelations, investigators weren’t able to identify a motive for the shooting.