Connecticut Elementary School Massacre

[MacCruiskeen]

I can easily envision a scenario in which the police had quickly and quietly spoken to Ryan Lanza only to later hear people say their lack of gusto and thoroughness was evidence of complicity.

Nonsense. "Complicity" with what? Complicity with his obvious innocence? He had been proven not to be the dead Newtown gunman as soon as they found him alive in Hoboken (about 10am?). He had been completely cleared of any involvement by about 2pm at the latest, because some time shortly thereafter they announced it to the public. Then they kept the entire building and the entire street locked down into the hours of darkness.

I can easily envision a scenario in which I win the lottery, by the way. Just thought I'd share that with you. (The envisioning, not the winnings.)

[barracuda]

I don't understand. How long do you think it should have taken for two law enforcement agencies to adequately question Ryan and his neighbors and search his apartment and computer? Because six hours doesn't seem particularly egregious to me considering that twenty-eight persons were dead. In all the interviews with his neighbors featured around the web, I don't hear a single complaint that the police took too long in their investigation.

[MacCruiskeen]

The question is not whether anyone was quoted in the press complaining about the police locking down the neighborhood all day. The question is why the police locked down the neighborhood all day.

Anyway: here's a timeline from the Daily Mail, fwiw. According to the same Daily Mail report, Ryan Lanza was in his office at Ernst & Young in Times Square NYC when he received, via the mass media, the greatly-exaggerated news that he was a dead killer. He spoke to his boss and co-workers, then he went home, tweeting and Facebooking like crazy, and including the information that he was on the bus on his way home.

Friday morning Adam Lanza leaves his home in his mother's car after 'shooting her dead'

9.30am Classes begin at Sandy Hook Elementary School

9.35am First 911 calls that a shooting is underway; police arrive within minutes

9.40am Shooting underway at the school's main office and a kindergarten class

9.45am SWAT team arrives; checks building

10am Reports of deaths begin to trickle out; Obama is briefed

10.30am Police announce the shooter is dead; later revealed he died from a self-inflicted gun wound

12.10pm First reports mistakenly naming killer as Ryan Lanza, 24

2.47pm President Obama orders flags to fly at half-mast

1.08pm Reports that the death toll is at 27; at press conference, police say deaths include staff and students

2pm Authorities announce a body was discovered at killer's Newtown home

2.40pm Reports of investigation at Ryan Lanza's home in New Jersey; he writes on Facebook that he was not involved and is later led away for questioning

3.17pm President Obama addresses the nation and struggles to contain his emotions

5pm Adam Lanza is named as the shooter

7pm Prayer vigil held at St Rose of Lima Catholic Church in Newtown; hundreds attend, including Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z2J0q0k6Hj
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Again: ^^caveat lector. May be accurate, may not. It's certainly incomplete. But it's the only timeline I can find.

So he obviously wasn't that dead killer, he wasn't on the run, and he really was not hard to find. So I'm wondering why at least 100 minutes elapsed between the discovery of the body & the ID, and the leak-to-the-press that Ryan was that dead killer.

What the fuck were the police doing in the meantime? How hard can it have been to reach Ryan Lanza? Or his employer? He was a fully-wired-up young member of the 21st century, working for a bank in Manhattan! Smartphone, E-mail, Facebook, Twitter. One phone call would have sufficed to establish that he was ALIVE, and therefore that he was innocent of the crime.

I still don't know exactly what time the police condescended to share the news of his innocence with the media and the world. It certainly took them hours.

[barracuda]

A phone call would not have absolved him of suspicion of complicity. He could easily have had something to do with the killings. He could have easily been an accomplice if he had, for instance, in any way aided Adam in the killings, if he had given Adam his ID to allow him to purchase ammunition or any other purposes related to the crime, if he had foreknowledge, if he gave encouragement, etc.

[MacCruiskeen]

A phone call would not have absolved him of suspicion of complicity.

Ryan Lanza was not being sought for complicity in the crime. He was being "sought" to confirm that he no longer existed, because he had just been ID'd as a dead killer (a dead lone gunman) in a school in Newtown.

[barracuda]

And so a phone call would have sufficed. Okay.

[MacCruiskeen]

Okay.

And meanwhile, the boys' father had also been reported dead, and also received the news of his son's and ex-wife's violent deaths, not from the police, but through the charming medium of the free press (a salivating hack in his garage driveway).

The whole case stinks.

[MacCruiskeen]

Is it still legal to wonder aloud whether Ryan Lanza's ID was planted on that body? Because, if not, I'm now a criminal.

9.35am First 911 calls that a shooting is underway; police arrive within minutes

9.40am Shooting underway at the school's main office and a kindergarten class

9.45am SWAT team arrives; checks building

It seems the SWAT team were first on the scene, and extremely quickly too. Masked and armed, presumably. So exactly where did that SWAT team come from? Was it an FBI team? Is it still legal to distrust those fine anonymous gentlemen?

Also, what was that ID, exactly? I will presume it's still legal to wonder. Was it by any a chance a blurred b&w photo of a brown-eyed boy, namely the young, skinny Ryan? Accidents can happen, even to the most experienced SWAT team. ("Shit! Wrong brother!")

Questions, questions... Purely hypothetical, of course. And only because a) the entire case is such a grotesque mess, and b) I find it hard to conceive that Adam Lanza would have been capable of such a crime, and I have certainly seen no hint of a motive so far, unless it was the untrue assertion that his mother was a teacher at the school. I find it much easier to conceive that some extremely brutalised and hardened psychopaths were employed to carry out the crime, although I don't find that easy to conceive either.

NB I am presuming, of course, that the Newtown local police were as appalled as anyone else by the massacre - indeed, that they were even more appalled than most people. They have my sympathy. Many of them will be well-acquainted with the victims and their families. Some of those police officers will be parents themselves, maybe even parents of victims. It is not the Newtown local police I distrust.

[Perelandra]

Although due to Officers having to be on call-out most of the day, they may be assigned to regular patrol. To decrease response times to serious situations that need the direct attention of SWAT Officers, it is now a widely used method to place SWAT equipment and weaponry in secured lockers in the trunks of specialized police cruisers.

I assume that Adam took his brother's ID because he wanted him to find out quickly, possibly to hurt him.

[MacCruiskeen]

I assume that Adam took his brother's ID because he wanted him to find out quickly, possibly to hurt him.

Why would you presume such a thing?

[Perelandra]

Well, the first part just seems logical to me, and the second part is pure conjecture. I remember reading something about how they had been estranged for some time, as with his father. He could have been very angry at them. Regardless, it's impossible to know the thoughts of a dead person, so don't mind me. It's just opinion tacked on to the SWAT detail.

[Luther Blissett]

Ryan Lanza sure did receive a lot of phone calls that day, but they seemed to have been coming from journalists and amateur sleuths.

I assumed from this early evidence that Ryan had no clue it was his brother.

[barracuda]

9.35am First 911 calls that a shooting is underway; police arrive within minutes

9.40am Shooting underway at the school's main office and a kindergarten class

9.45am SWAT team arrives; checks building

It seems the SWAT team were first on the scene, and extremely quickly too. Masked and armed, presumably. So exactly where did that SWAT team come from? Was it an FBI team? Is it still legal to distrust those fine anonymous gentlemen?

SWAT was not the first on the scene, even by the timeline you posted: "police arrive within minutes".

The SWAT was local CSP, dispatched at 9:41 a.m.

I find it hard to conceive that Adam Lanza would have been capable of such a crime

I find it hard to conceive that anyone would have been capable of such a crime. But there it is.

[IanEye]

Well, the first part just seems logical to me, and the second part is pure conjecture. I remember reading something about how they had been estranged for some time, as with his father. He could have been very angry at them. Regardless, it's impossible to know the thoughts of a dead person, so don't mind me. It's just opinion tacked on to the SWAT detail.

along this line of thinking, i have always wondered if Kip Kinkel would have murdered his sister, Kristin, if she hadn't been in Hawaii at the time Kip went on his "spree killing" episode.

[MacCruiskeen]

"18 minutes ago", "7 minutes ago" ... I wish Facebook would just print the damn time. And exactly who is he protesting his innocence to there?

Ryan Lanza sure did receive a lot of phone calls that day, but they seemed to have been coming from journalists and amateur sleuths.

Well, whoever they were, they certainly did the blatantly obvious and located & contacted the allegedly-deceased alleged killer long before the fucking cops did. He must have been at work for hours by the time he wrote "Fuck you CNN it wasn't me". Where the hell were the police all this time? Why didn't they phone him or his employer?

Then he takes the bus all the way from Times Square to Hoboken and the police only finally contact him at his home. So who the fuck was this, taking all these films & photos of his arrest?

Photo: AP

See also: (c)Getty Images

Must have been a whole gaggle of cameramen and press photographers there.

How did they know he was going to be arrested, and where, and when? Who told them? And why? Why make such an exhibition of him? The fact that he was alive already proved that he was innocent of the crime he was accused of.

What's going on here?