Newtown: An American Tragedy (18 page)

Dozens of news organizations and blogs ran with it in stories and tweets. The picture was on the heavily trafficked Fox News Website. A quick public records search showed that Ryan Lanza lived at 36 Yogananda Street at one point, and he was also listed as living at 1313 Grand Street in Hoboken, New Jersey. Droves of media were immediately deployed in both directions.

On his forty-minute bus ride home, Ryan’s phone was blowing up with slurs, accusations, and Facebook friend requests from journalists. He took to social media to defend himself.

“Fuck you CNN it wasn’t me,” he wrote on his Facebook page as he walked to the train station.

“This is batshit insane,” commented his roommate Michael Shapiro. “How the fuck do they jump to such a conclusion with zero evidence?”

The messages continued to flood his phone. Death threats. Others asked for an explanation.

“Everyone shut the fuck up, it wasn’t me,” he posted three minutes later.

“Do you need anything ready for you when you get home? Can I set anything out for you to grab and go? Anything else I can do?” posted his roommate Jessica O’Brien.

“I’m on the bus home now, it wasn’t me,” Ryan responded.

More angry messages accusing him of murder hit his in-box. Thirty minutes after he had left his office, he was getting texts from
a coworker telling them that the NYPD had stormed into Ernst & Young looking for him and was raiding his office. Still on his way to Hoboken, he began furiously punching into his phone that he was innocent.

“IT WASN’T ME I WAS AT WORK IT WASN’T ME.”

Brett Wilshe, a friend of Ryan Lanza, saw all the commotion on Facebook and sent him a private message.

“What is going on? Is everything all right?”

“The shooter may have had my ID,” Ryan messaged back.

A few minutes later, Brett received another message from Ryan. “It was my brother. Oh my God I think my mother is dead.”

D
espite his pleas of innocence, all the major media networks continued to identify Ryan Lanza as the suspect and reported more erroneous details as they emerged: His mother, Nancy Lanza, was a teacher at the school and had been shot in the classroom; Ryan’s brother was found dead in Hoboken.

The CNN blog kept leading the way:

3:09
P.M.
The suspect’s mother was shot and killed at the school, according to a source close to the investigation. She was a teacher there. And we now know that Ryan Lanza, the suspected gunman, was 24.

3:22
P.M.
It appears that another member of the alleged shooter’s family is dead. A senior law enforcement official familiar with the investigation says a brother of the alleged
shooter was found dead in a home searched in Hoboken, New Jersey. We already knew the suspect’s mother was found dead in the elementary school.

3:51
P.M.
A federal law enforcement source tells CNN’s John King the information from the scene is that the shooter arrived and headed directly toward and to his mother’s classroom. That and the other information now emerging—another family member killed, police interviews—lead them to believe his mother was the primary target.

Throughout the afternoon, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer began repeating the information about the identity of the gunman over the airwaves. “Just to recap. The shooter in this case, the suspected gunman, identified now as Ryan Lanza. In his twenties. That according to a law enforcement source who told that to CNN. The shooter died at the scene.”

Blitzer later added during his 3
P.M.
broadcast: “Ryan Lanza’s mother, a teacher at this elementary school, was shot and killed herself.” Minutes later Blitzer amended his report: “We’re also told that the mother of Ryan Lanza, Nancy Lanza, was shot and killed in this classroom, as well as earlier the brother of Ryan Lanza in a residential area of Hoboken, New Jersey.”

Shortly before 3
P.M.
Ryan Lanza got off the bus in Hoboken, New Jersey, and walked along Grand Street to the five-story brick building known as the Metropolitian.

After a brief few moments inside, Hoboken police arrived, handcuffed him, and led him into a squad car in full view of a CBS television camera. The images were aired across the country. Media
outlets quickly scrambled to the Metropolitan, where Hoboken police gathered with FBI agents. As curiosity grew from onlookers and media members, police draped yellow police tape around the perimeter, closing both sides of Grand Street.

Throughout the evening, the police and FBI agents could be seen going in and out of Ryan’s apartment as they searched his phone and computer records.

Inside One Police Plaza in Hoboken, Ryan Lanza was being questioned by police. For hours they asked the same questions and Ryan gave the same answers.

“Do you know what your brother has done?” they asked.

Ryan nodded his head and quietly muttered, “Yes.”

He had read the news reports on his phone and knew that twenty children were dead. He knew his mother was dead but had still not processed the information. Ryan didn’t shed any tears and always referred to his brother as “Adam,” and not his brother.

“When was the last time you spoke with Adam?”

“I haven’t spoken to him in over a year.”

“Do you have any idea why he did this?”

“No,” Ryan told them. “I don’t know him anymore.”

They asked him why the brothers no longer spoke.

“He is sick,” he told police. “He didn’t talk to anyone.”

“Does he have any friends?” they asked.

“I don’t think so,” Ryan responded.

Law enforcement was satisfied that Ryan had cooperated fully. As he was escorted out of the police station, media swarmed him. He tried to cover his face but couldn’t escape the aggressive cameras.

Blitzer continued to report the shooter’s name as Ryan Lanza
until 5:45
P.M.
when the anchor went to the airwaves and corrected himself, saying, “I want to clarify what we earlier, like other news organizations, were reporting that the suspected shooter was Ryan Lanza, age twenty-four. We now believe the shooter was not Ryan Lanza. Ryan Lanza was taken into custody, we’re told, earlier in the day.”

According to the Associated Press, “a law enforcement official mistakenly transposed the brothers’ first names.” Soon after, a new report hit the wires. A law enforcement official told the Associated Press that Adam Lanza’s girlfriend and another friend were now missing in New Jersey.

Nine hours after Adam Lanza walked into Sandy Hook Elementary School, reliable information remained elusive. There was still little known about the mysterious gunman, and much of what had been reported would later turn out to be wrong.

By nightfall more than two hundred reporters from around the world had descended on the small town and settled on a single horrifying narrative: twenty-six dead, including twenty children and the school principal. The shooter, a twenty-year-old named Adam Lanza, shot his mother at her home, then drove to Sandy Hook Elementary where he murdered the employees and children before committing suicide inside the school.

The media contingent took over the small Sandy Hook downtown area at the intersection of Church Hill Road and Glen, and then spread out across the area in a desperate search for any information that could answer the questions the world was asking:

Who was Adam Lanza? Why did he do this?

B
y 10:20
A.M.
Friday morning, the Sandy Hook volunteer firehouse had already been converted into a makeshift staging area for children, parents, and first responders. Large tarps were spread out across the floor and folding chairs were opened. Bottles of water, bags of chips, and boxes of crackers were being laid out on tables by the Ladies Auxiliary of Sandy Hook. The sounds of cartoons playing could be heard in the background. On another table were plates and pans of pizza donated from My Place Pizza & Restaurant, but no one touched them.

Hundreds of students who had been led safely out of the school were now lined up single file behind their teachers. Sitting in one of the chairs was third-grade teacher Teri Alves. She had become dehydrated and was hyperventilating. Parents began rushing bottles of water to her as quickly as they could move.

Not far away sat kindergarten aide Deborah Pisani, who was
holding a large bandage over the part of her foot where the ricochet bullet had struck. In another area, folding chairs were set up in a circle for an impromptu multifaith service where people began to gather, hold hands, and pray.

At one point a tall man wearing a trench coat had gotten inside and begun taking pictures. Several men tackled him to the ground and held him until two officers made their way over and took him outside and questioned him before ordering him off the property.

Amid the tears of joy, there was a small group of parents who couldn’t find their children. They were walking in desperate circles, making cell phone calls, asking anyone for information on where they could go to retrieve their loved ones.

Up the road two officers were stationed next to a wooden barricade set up to block access on Dickinson Drive and direct parents to the firehouse. But some of the parents who had been unable to find their children at the firehouse began trying desperately to get into the school to locate their kids.

“I want to see my child,” they screamed.

“At the firehouse you will receive further instructions on how to locate your children,” the officers kept repeating patiently.

As more students were reunited with their parents, it soon became apparent that there were two classrooms “unaccounted for,” those of Victoria Soto and Amanda D’Amato. Carlee Soto had rushed to Sandy Hook Elementary School as soon as she heard there was a shooting. Shortly after pulling up, she was told her sister Vicki had likely been killed inside. She pressed her left hand to her heart and her face contorted in anguish as she began crying into her cell phone.

An hour away, sitting in traffic, Jillian Soto was with her boyfriend
and two other friends, still waiting for an update on her sister Victoria, when she received a phone call from her younger sister, Carlee, telling her that the family was leaving the firehouse and heading home.

“Oh, we know where Vicki is?” said Jillian, her voice full of hope.

“No, we still don’t, but Mommy is too tired of sitting here. She just wants to go home,” Carlee replied.

The family had already gotten the bad news that Victoria was gone, but they wanted to deliver it to Jillian in person. Moments later Jillian started receiving Facebook messages popping up on the screen of her iPhone from friends offering their condolences.

“I’m so sorry,” read one.

“Your sister was a hero,” read another.

She called her father. “Tell me what’s going on?” she demanded.

“Everything’s okay, baby,” her father calmly responded. “Just get home. Just drive home. Drive safely. Where are you?”

“I’m in Hartford, stuck in traffic.”

“It’s fine. Just take your time, get home, and we’ll see you when you get here.”

“Tell me what’s going on!”

Her father told her they were 99 percent sure that Victoria had been killed inside Sandy Hook. He was waiting to identify the body.

Jillian began sobbing. She looked over at her boyfriend, who was in tears.

B
ecky Kowalski had been waiting by her phone, as instructed, for more information on her son Chase when finally the phone rang.
The caller informed her that they had evacuated the children from the school and that she should go there to pick up her son.

After she arrived at the school, Becky saw a mix of intense emotions. She saw her friends with their children, hugging and rejoicing before taking them home, while other parents had looks of terror etched on their faces as they wandered aimlessly, desperate for information.

“Did you see Chase? Did anyone see Chase?” she began asking, more and more frantically.

“I’m sure he’s fine,” they kept responding. “Go to the fire-house.”

Finally, she spotted another friend who provided her with the answer she had been looking for. “I think I saw Chase with a group of kids outside the school,” the friend told her.

On the short drive from the school to the firehouse, she turned on the radio and the news that came through the speakers was unthinkable. There were twenty dead children. Her fears were amplified when, before entering the firehouse, a state trooper told her that the parents of students in her son’s class should wait in a special room in the rear of the building. The trooper had her sign a sheet of paper. She counted the signatures. There were twenty.

O
utside the school, Scarlett Lewis was looking for her son Jesse. She kept witnessing emotional reunions between parents and children as she waited amid the chaos for her own child. Still, there was no sign of him.

“They took him to the Children’s Adventure Center,” a parent
told her. She ran to the center, near the school, but Jesse wasn’t there.

“Oh, I think they took Jesse to the house next door with six other kids,” another concerned parent advised.