Details emerge on Sandy Hook shooting, Lanza's belongings

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Balloons hang from the Sandy Hook Elementary School sign in Newtown, Conn.

A report on why Adam Lanza shot and killed his mother, then 20 first-graders and six adults at a Newtown school is due soon, but some details have already emerged.

HARTFORD, Conn. — Investigators who entered Adam Lanza's home after he shot and killed 20 first-graders and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School on Dec. 14 found his bed neatly made. An armoire held five matching tan-colored shirts with five pairs of khaki pants. Black garbage bags sealed with duct tape covered the bedroom windows.

An empty cereal bowl rested on the desktop near damaged computer parts in the adjacent second-floor room in the home he shared with his mother, Nancy Lanza. He had removed the hard drives from his computers, then opened the metal containers to get at the discs which store data. He scratched a W through the discs, before trying to smash them with a barbell.

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Lanza's online activity, including his interaction with online users about guns, video games and computers, has become an area of investigation for authorities attempting to determine why he shot his mother to death before shooting his way through the school.

A long-awaited state police report is due soon, but the Hartford Courant has learned through law enforcement sources details that provide a clearer picture of what happened at Lanza's home and in Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Police investigators concluded Nancy Lanza had been shot four times in the same spot. The .22-caliber rifle Adam Lanza used was pressed directly against her forehead and found at her bedside. The shades were still drawn in her bedroom, leading police to believe she was killed sometime before dawn.

Lanza drove to the school, where he killed 20 first-graders and six adults. The lone survivor from teacher Lauren Rousseau's class was shielded from the gunman because she was hidden in one of the corners of the classroom's tiny bathroom.

Among the other revelations, sources said, is that a school secretary and nurse remained in a closet in Principal Dawn Hochsprung's office for several hours even while state police officials — unaware that anyone was in the room — used the office as a command center. The room had not been cleared by SWAT teams. Hochsprung was one of the adults killed.

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State police trying to determine Lanza's path through the school initially believed that he entered Rousseau's room first and then backtracked to teacher Victoria Soto's first-grade classroom. But some of the surviving children from Soto's class told investigators they didn't hear gunshots until Lanza came in their room, casting doubt on the original theory.

The FBI is assisting the state police on tracking Lanza's movements using sophisticated sound technology. Sources said the secretary in the main office did not hang up the phone after calling 911, and federal authorities are trying to use the sounds recorded through that open landline to help chart Lanza's movements in hopes of better understanding his actions.

When the shooting started, school janitor Rick Thorne ran through the school warning teachers to close their doors and then used a master key to lock many of the doors for them. The state police SWAT team that was clearing the school after the shooting had to get the key from Thorne to open some of the rooms. The key was so worn from use that morning it snapped in one of the doors.

A source with knowledge of the probe said that when Lanza drove to the Sandy Hook Elementary School, he parked his car in a way that could have set him up to ambush responding police officers. He parked with the passenger's side facing a small brick wall near the front entrance. His shotgun was left leaning against the passenger's side door.

The spot gave him potentially a perfect line of sight to shoot at unsuspecting police driving down the long driveway, around a curve and into his line of fire. It also provided him cover since the school and woods were behind him.

By examining evidence at the scene, a source said, investigators determined Lanza fired eight shots through the front glass to kill Hochsprung and school psychologist Mary Scherlach, who ran out of a room to the left of Hochsprung's office. Police believe Lanza also fired one round from his pistol in the hallway but they are unsure why. He killed himself with a second shot from the pistol.

When Lanza entered Soto's room he turned to his left and immediately fired at Soto, who was standing toward the back of the room near the window. Police believe some of those bullets went into the parking lot, striking some of the cars.

Through interviews with surviving children, sources said, investigators learned that some of Soto's students were holding hands in the far right corner near the chalkboard, away from Lanza's initial line of fire. When Lanza stopped firing because his gun jammed, student Jesse Lewis yelled for kids to run. Lewis was shot to death. Six of the children ran past Lanza to safety.

While the roles of Newtown officers have been documented in national media reports, new details have also emerged about state troopers' actions.
Several troopers from Troop A rushed to the school, including the barracks commander Michael Hoffbauer, Sgt. William Cario and members of the narcotics task force who were arriving at the troop for a case meeting. Two troopers, Carlos Guerra and William Cornoyer, were driving on I-84 transporting a prisoner to New Haven, when they diverted to the school.

Two members of the SWAT team formed impromptu search teams to make sure there wasn't a second shooter, ultimately discovering Kaitlin Roig and her first-grade class locked in a bathroom. Guerra and Cario ran into Rousseau's room and found the children in the bathroom.
Cario carried one of the children out of the school to a waiting cruiser, which whisked her away to Danbury Hospital. The child died there.