School gunman ‘was planning wider massacre’

The gunman in the Connecticut shooting rampage shot his mother four times in the head before going to the school and gunning down 26, authorities said yesterday as details emerged suggesting that Adam Lanza had planned an even more gruesome massacre.

Lanza blasted his way into the school and used a high-powered rifle to kill 20 children and six adults, including the principal who tried to stop him.

The bloodshed might even have been worse, said Gov Dannel Malloy. Lanza shot himself when he heard police coming. Authorities said they found multiple 30-round magazines and hundreds of bullets at the school, enough ammunition on Lanza to carry out significantly more carnage.

“There was a lot of ammo, a lot of clips,” said state police lieutenant Paul Vance. “Certainly a lot of lives were potentially saved.”

As US president Barack Obama prepared to attend a vigil for the victims and churches opened their doors to comfort mourners, federal agents fanned out to dozens of gun stores and shooting ranges across Connecticut, chasing leads they hoped would cast light on Lanza’s life.

Among their questions: Why did his mother, Nancy Lanza, a well-to-do suburban divorcee, keep a cache of high-power weapons in the house? How much experience did Lanza have with those guns? Above all, what set him on a path to go, room by room, killing 6- and 7-year-olds?

Malloy offered no possible motive for the shooting and a law enforcement official has said police have found no letters or diaries that could shed light on it.

Lanza shot his 52-year-old mother to death at their shared home on Friday. She was found in her bed.

Lanza then drove to Sandy Hook Elementary School in her car with at least three of her guns, shot out a school window, and opened fire.

Lanza had two handguns, a Glock 10mm and a Sig Sauer 9 mm, and a Bushmaster rifle. Police also found a shotgun in his car.

All the victims at the school were shot with the rifle, at least some up close, and all were shot more than once, said chief medical examiner Wayne Carver. There were as many as 11 shots on the bodies he examined. Lanza died of a gunshot wound to the head from a 10mm gun, and the bullet was recovered in a classroom wall.

The terrible details about the last moments of young innocents emerged as authorities released their names and ages — the youngest 6 and 7, the oldest 56. They included Ana Marquez-Greene, a girl who had just moved to Newtown from Canada; Victoria Soto, a 27-year-old teacher who died trying to hide her pupils; and principal Dawn Hochsprung, who lunged at Lanza to disarm him.

The gunman’s father, Peter Lanza, revealed his family’s anguish in the aftermath of the massacre.

“No words can express how heartbroken we are,” he said. “We are in a state of disbelief and trying to find whatever answers we can. We too are asking why.”

The tragedy has plunged Newtown into mourning and added the picturesque New England community of 27,000 people to the grim map of towns where mass shootings have periodically reignited the national debate over gun control but led to little change.