Skip to content

The Trench Reynolds Report

Thwarting evil since the year 2000

  • Contact
  • About
  • Trench Report
  • Crime Classified
  • Social Mayhem
  • Bad Breeders
  • Patreon
  • Merch
The Trench Reynolds Report

Tag: Sandy Hook Elementary School

More thoughts on Newtown

5
Posted by Trench Reynolds on December 17, 2012
Nancy Lanza
Nancy Lanza

I’m a little scatterbrained trying to get this post together so you may have to bear with me if it seems a little disorganized but there’s a lot more ground I’d like to cover.

First up a little news. We may never know the motive behind why Adam Lanza decided to attack Sandy Hook Elementary. The New York Times is reporting that Adam Lanza had no real connection to the school….

There was “no connection” between Adam Lanza and Sandy Hook Elementary School, a Connecticut State Police spokesman said Monday afternoon. There had been earlier reports that Mr. Lanza had attended the school as a child. It was not immediately clear if “no connection” meant that Mr. Lanza had not attended the school.

On top of that Nancy Lanza was not nor has ever been a teacher at the school.

Meanwhile The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Adam Lanza had smashed his computer to bits prior to the tragedy possibly to thwart the investigation into the shooting…

The damaged evidence raised the possibility that Mr. Lanza’s rampage may have been premeditated and not a result of a spontaneous decision.

Lastly there is NO TRUTH to the RUMOR that Adam Lanza got into a fight with four teachers at the school the day before the killings…

[Updated at 6:22 p.m. ET] Earlier reports that the suspected shooter, Adam Lanza, had an altercation with four adults at the school on Thursday have been investigated and are not accurate, according to a law enforcement source with knowledge of the investigation.

Lt. J. Paul Vance of the Connecticut State Police noted in a news conference Saturday that he knew of no reports about Lanza being involved in any altercations at the school.

Remember this one kids, it becomes important later.

Now on to the opinion…

NANCY LANZA: I’m usually the first person to jump on the parents of a school shooter if they turned a blind eye to the warning signs. I can’t do that in this case. By all accounts Nancy Lanza was more involved in her son’s life than most parents that don’t have a special needs child are. She was willing to pull up roots and move to wherever Adam wanted to go to college just to make sure he could get a good start on a new life. So even I was taken aback when I saw some Nancy Lanza hate on the internet today. I’m hoping it’s just from a small and ignorant minority. By all accounts she was her son’s greatest ally and she was shot in the face repeatedly for it.

MORE ON GUNS: Something I forgot to mention about arming teacher’s in yesterday’s post. If you arm all the teachers with firearms then all those guns are nothing more than a shopping list for a potential school shooter. If school shooters can obtain weapons through straw man gun purchases or steal them from their parents lifting one from a teacher would be no hard challenge. Arming teachers would only work in a perfect world and ours is far from perfect.

COPYCATS: I’m not going to post about ever loser that has made a threat on Facebook or to their wives or whatever in the wake of Newtown. These are the people who are actually looking for some kind of fame. Unless it was a credible threat I will not be posting about those jackholes here.

BLOGGERS BEING ASSHOLES AND SPREADING MYTHS: Earlier today I was reading an L.A. Times article about Dave Cullen’s book Columbine. In it it’s mentioned that reporting about Columbine was like playing a game of Telephone. If that’s the case (and it was) the reporting out of Newtown was like playing a game of Crappy Tracfone While Going Through A Tunnel In A Lead Lined Truck. So much misinformation was reported about Newtown and just seems to now being perpetuated by some bloggers. One blogger that I used to have a modicum of respect for is still posting that Lanza was at the school the day before the shootings. The only ‘news’ outlets that are still clinging to that part of the story are British tabloids and gossip blogs. This was also a blogger who laid the blame squarely at the feet of Nancy Lanza without hesitation. Another blogger I used to have respect for said that we need to round up all the ‘Aspies’ and put them in a concentration camp further disseminating a myth that Asperger’s automatically makes you a potential killer. (Please see my mea culpa in the comments.)

Granted there’s no school you have to go to in order to become a blogger but some of us actually take pride in our work and to see hacks like this doing a disservice to everybody makes all of us look bad.

One of my blogging mentors once told me controversial but be yourself. If these bloggers are being controversial for the sake of controversy then they’re just page count whores. If they are being true to themselves then I feel sorry for them for keeping themselves in such a state of ignorance.

Crime, Trench Report Adam Lanza, Asperger's, Nancy Lanza, Sandy Hook Elementary School, school shooting

The Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting

12
Posted by Trench Reynolds on December 16, 2012

sandyhook

We all know what happened by now, there’s no need for me to rehash it. Instead I’m going to address some things about Friday’s tragedy. Where to start is the only problem.

MENTAL HEALTH: First I want to address the whole Asperger’s issue. It’s being reported that Adam Lanza may have had Asperger’s syndrome which is a disorder on the Autism scale. As I’ve said multiple times on this site Asperger’s does not impair the sufferers ability to tell right from wrong. Several school killers and plotters have tried using Asperger’s as a defense. The one that leaps to mind is John Odgren who stabbed his classmate to death, James Alenson, at their Massachusetts high school. He was sentenced to life. To my recollection and through the stories that I’ve posted on this site no suspect ever claiming Asperger’s as a defense was ever acquitted.

My greatest fear is that with all these claims of Asperger’s as a criminal defense would not only lead to legitimate Asperger’s sufferers being labeled as potential mass murderers but that an Asperger’s defense will eventually lead to killers going free just because some quack testifies that they have Asperger’s. Not to mention that Asperger’s is not a mental disorder but a neurological one.

The other thing people have been saying in the wake of this tragedy is that it highlights the lack of mental healthcare in this country. That couldn’t be any further from the truth. As someone who has a mental illness I was able to get as much help as I needed. The problem was it’s not an overnight fix. It took years for me to finally get the right treatment and I’m a much better person because of it. There is no quick fix and a lot of people with mental illnesses get frustrated and impatient in trying to find the right help.

Another issue is that when people are receiving the right treatment start feeling better than think that they don’t need the treatment anymore and stop. Again this isn’t like a cold where you can just take some pills for a few days and everything is ok. Mental health issues can be a lifelong matter that you may have to deal with.

Also in this day and age there is still an issue of social stigma where mental health issues are concerned. Some of the more ignorant among us think there’s some kind of weakness in admitting that they have mental issues or see someone with mental issues as damaged goods and beyond repair.

Lastly there is a conflict in this country between mental health and civil rights. Unless someone is an immediate danger to themselves and others they cannot be forced to undergo treatment. Adam Lanza was 20 years old. By all rights he could not be forced to undergo any treatment if he didn’t want to as a legal adult.

There is no perfect solution when it comes to mental healthcare and acts of extreme violence. What the country needs is more education however too many people are too entrenched in their beliefs rather than facts.

GUNS: One of the more pro-gun arguments I saw on Friday and yesterday is that our teachers should be armed. One of the more frequent arguments I saw in this regard is that Israeli teachers are armed and the last school shooting there was 39 years ago that was committed by Palestinian terrorists. Here’s the parts that they’re leaving out in that argument. In Israel all citizens are required to serve in the military so they actually receive training in not only the weapons but in situations like an attack on a school. The other thing is that Israel is a country that is constantly at war and under attack. That would never work in the US. First off required military service will never happen in this country secondly can you imagine trying to tell the teachers’ unions in this country that they’ll be required to not only carry firearms but to undergo training in them? It’ll never happen. Also with no offense to teachers some of them among you are not the most outstanding citizens. We can’t hardly go a week without hearing about some teacher that was engaged in illegal activity usually involving one of their students. Now give them guns. Yeah, I don’t think so.

The anti-gun argument was about the ease of which American citizens have access to guns. By most accounts Nancy Lanza was a responsible gun owner and avid collector. I don’t know about the laws in Connecticut but if they’re anything like the gun laws in New Jersey it probably takes an act of God before you can own a gun. There is no pattern in school shootings on whether or not the guns were obtained illegally or not. In Columbine and Red Lake the guns were obtained illegally, in Virginia Tech and NIU they were not.

There is also a lot of ignorance when it comes to guns as well. A lot of people do not know what the terms in relation to guns mean. Some people will hear terms like automatic, semi-automatic and assault rifle and automatically think we’re talking about machine guns. Machine guns are fully automatic by the way and are illegal to own anywhere in this country if memory serves me right. The three types of guns I mentioned all have one thing in common. One trigger pull means one bullet.

Again when it comes to solving gun crimes in this country there are no easy answers. You can’t take the guns away from responsible citizens until you do something about all the illegal guns that are out there. Solve that problem and you probably have a Nobel prize on your way.

FAME/INFAMY: Another thing I noticed in the past couple of days were people saying that Adam Lanza’s name should never be published as it gives them the fame or infamy that they were looking for. I wholeheartedly disagree with this. I think that history’s most vile monsters should never be forgotten. In my opinion it’s similar to those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.

Also let’s look at this realistically. Prior to Friday in my opinion there were four major school shootings in what I call the modern era. There was Columbine, Red Lake, NIU, and Virginia Tech. If you went up to the average person on the street not only would I doubt that they would be able to tell you who the shooters were in those instances most of them probably couldn’t even tell you that there we’re shootings at Red Lake or NIU. Most people only know the names of the most infamous of criminals. They remember names like Lee Harvey Oswald, Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, Timothy McVeigh, Charles, Manson, Osama Bin Laden and the like. I doubt most anyone could name Jeff Weise or Stephen Kazmierczak. For most of these shooters their ‘fame’ is fleeting at best. Even if Adam Lanza did want fame there’s not a lot he can do with it from hell.

MISINFORMATION: Nobody should be really surprised about this one. We live in a society where we need information now regardless of whether or not it’s correct. Somebody on Twitter said that they have never seen the media act so irresponsibly in a time of tragedy before. I replied back to them, I have, it was 13 years ago. How much misinformation was reported at the time of Columbine that still persist as pervasive myths today. In that time the national media really hasn’t learned anything and I doubt they ever will. Journalism in its myriad forms is not about reporting the truth anymore, it’s about being first and getting as many eyeballs as possible on their particular outlet.

It also didn’t help that a lot of people on social media wouldn’t wait for any kind of verification before repeating it ad nauseam on their respective profiles. How many times was Ryan Lanza’s Facebook passed around before it was confirmed that his brother was the shooter? We weren’t exactly helping ourselves with that one.

THE VICTIMS: Let’s never forget who this is really about. It’s not about your religion or lack of one and it’s not about your political views or your favorite politician. It’s about the over two dozen people, mostly small children who tragically and needlessly lost their lives on Friday.

Charlotte Bacon, age 6
Daniel Barden, age 7
Rachel Davino, age 29
Olivia Engel, age 6
Josephine Gay, age 7
Ana Grace Marquez-Greene, age 6
Dylan Hockley, age 6
Dawn Hocksprung, age 47
Madeline F. Hsu, age 6
Catherine V. Hubbard, age 6
Chase Kowalski, age 7
Jesse Lewis, age 6
James Mattioli, age 6
Grace McDonnell, age 7
Anne Marie Murphy, age 52,
Emilie Parker, age 6
Jack Pinto, age 6
Noah Pozner, age 6
Caroline Previdi, age 6
Jessica Rekos, age 6
Avielle Richman, age 6
Lauren Russeau, age 30
Mary Sherlach, age 56
Victoria Soto, age 27
Benjamin Wheeler, age 6
Allison Wyatt, age 6

Thanks to Bonnie for the list.

One name I purposely left off the victims list was Nancy Lanza and not for reasons you may think. She most definitely was a victim. Please keep that in mind as the Lanza family has to also deal with this tragedy. Ryan Lanza and his father not only lost a son and brother and a mother and (ex-)wife but will probably live with the guilt of this tragedy. Please keep them included with your prayers and thoughts of the all the victims.

Crime, Trench Report Adam Lanza, Asperger's, Sandy Hook Elementary School, school shooting

Posts navigation

Newer posts

Follow Us!

  • View trenchreynoldsblog’s profile on Facebook
  • View trenchreynolds’s profile on Twitter
  • View trenchreynolds’s profile on Instagram
  • View trenchreynolds’s profile on Pinterest
  • View trench-reynolds-a217ba6b’s profile on LinkedIn
  • View trenchreynolds’s profile on YouTube
  • View TrenchReynolds’s profile on Google+
  • View trench’s profile on Tumblr

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 1,634 other subscribers

Please Support Us!

Become a monthly patron on Patreon

Thanks to my current sponsors:
Lori M.
Mare
Michael R.
Thomas O.
Bonnie

Recent Posts

  • The bullying myth descended on Parkland
  • Shooter and victim dead after March shooting at Maryland high school
  • Latest Florida school shooter carried gun in guitar case
  • Two Okla. men killed during craigslist sale
  • We now know what happened to Carl Ferrer

Recent Comments

  • Trench Reynolds on Parkland shooter’s mother wasn’t afraid of her son having guns
  • Trench Reynolds on Backpage seized by Feds on Friday
  • tallyhomare on Backpage seized by Feds on Friday
  • Armando on Parkland shooter’s mother wasn’t afraid of her son having guns
  • Trench Reynolds on Ga. OfferUp killing over Playstation

Popular Posts

  • Stop sharing the Cody Wright picture on Facebook
  • Follow-up to the Cody Wright picture on Facebook
  • Facebook refuses to remove hoax picture accusing man…
  • Use Bitcoin for all your Backpage sex trafficking…
  • Memphis backpage prostitution bust

Follow me on Twitter

My Tweets

Child Abuse Resources

  • A Voice for the Innocent
  • Bikers Against Child Abuse International
  • Court Appointed Special Advocates for Children
  • State Child Abuse Reporting Numbers

Classifieds News

  • AIM Group
  • Craigslist Killings - Craigslist Safety
  • Greg's Corner

Further Reading

  • a deLayed teacher
  • BelchSpeak
  • Bonnie’s Blog of Crime
  • Court Junkie
  • Dan Shargel Photography
  • Dave Cullen
  • Dirkbag.com
  • Executed Today
  • Feed The Whales
  • Gill Was Here
  • Hellbeasts
  • Huff Wire
  • Jonno and me
  • Juggernuts
  • LeonardSipes.com
  • Mr and Mrs Detective Show
  • My Life According to Me
  • Pedophiles – The Rape of Innocence
  • Phyllis York
  • PolicyZ
  • Rants by Ronni
  • The Truth About the West Memphis 3
  • Trials & Tribulations
  • West Memphis Three Facts

Net Safety Resources

  • NetSmartz for Parents
  • SafeKIds.com
  • SafeTrade
  • Avoid Doxxing

School Violence Resources

  • Sandy Hook Promise
  • Saving Cain

Sex Trafficking Resources

  • Breaking Free
  • FAIR Girls
  • Florida Abolitionist
  • Selah Freedom
  • Sojourner Center

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries RSS
  • Comments RSS
  • WordPress.org

Categories

Archives

Tags

backpage beating california charged as an adult child abuse child molestation child porn child prostitution child solicitation Columbine columbiner connecticut craigslist craigslist killing dismemberment Facebook Florida georgia human trafficking illinois kik Massachusetts michigan missing child murder MySpace new-york North Carolina ohio Pennsylvania prostitution rape reader mail school shooting school shooting plot sex offender sexual assault shooting snapchat stabbing statutory rape Texas trench reynolds Village Voice Media washington
  • RSS - Posts
  • RSS - Comments



Web
Analytics


Idealist by NewMediaThemes