Out of nowhere,
New Yorker posted exclusive Andrew Solomon interview with Peter Lanza, father of Adam Lanza, the Sandy Hook mass killer, who has been largely silent. Unfortunately, he does not mention his ex-wife's leaving guns around the house with easy access, and Solomon doesn't bring it up either. One excerpt:
Since the shootings, Peter has avoided the press, but in September,
as the first anniversary of his son’s rampage approached, he contacted
me to say that he was ready to tell his story. We met six times, for
interviews lasting as long as seven hours. Shelley, a librarian at the
University of Connecticut, usually joined us and made soup or chili or
salads for lunch....An accountant who is a vice-president for taxes at a General
Electric subsidiary, he maintains a nearly fanatical insistence on
facts, and nothing annoyed him more in our conversations than
speculation—by me, the media, or anyone else. He is not by nature given
to self-examination, and often it was Shelley who underlined the
emotional ramifications of what he said.
Peter hadn’t seen his
son for two years at the time of the Sandy Hook killings, and, even with
hindsight, he doesn’t think that the catastrophe could have been
predicted. But he constantly thinks about what he could have done
differently and wishes he had pushed harder to see Adam.
And:
Peter does not think that Adam had any affection for him, either, by
that point. He said, “With hindsight, I know Adam would have killed me
in a heartbeat, if he’d had the chance. I don’t question that for a
minute. The reason he shot Nancy four times was one for each of us: one
for Nancy; one for him; one for Ryan; one for me.”
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