The State’s Attorney’s office in Danbury, CT, officially closed the case on the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary on November 25th, and released a pdf of its final report on the case.  It is a terrible and heartbreaking read.  For all the speculation and media reports flying around on Facebook, Twitter, and television that lasted for hours and hours on December 14, 2012, the reality is that less than eleven minutes elapsed from the point when the shooter, Adam Lanza, shot out the doors of Sandy Hook Elementary School, to the moment he ended it with a bullet through his brain.

Much was made in the days and weeks after the massacre about Lanza’s mental health, and his diagnosis of Asperger’s Syndrome (which has now been officially folded into the autism spectrum), and what responsibility his mother, who he murdered before heading to the elementary school, ought to bear.  As the mother of a son on the autism spectrum, I followed the developments and the revelations, looking to see what got turned up during the course of the investigation.

While the State’s Attorney’s report is reluctant to assign blame to anyone other than Lanza, it is clear that as he got older (he was 20 at the time of the shooting), he had become increasingly anti-social and reclusive.  Pages 29 -35 of the report detail his home life, relationships with his family members, and his rather unremarkable school career.  Other than one questionable video report in fifth grade, that may never have been handed in to the school, the conclusion is that:

Those mental health professionals who saw him did not see anything that would have predicted his future behavior.

And that is the crux of the matter.  What Nancy Lanza’s responsibility was in this can and will be endlessly debated (all the guns used were legally owned by her, she taught him to shoot and had him take NRA safety courses, she enabled his behaviors), what Adam Lanza did should probably be best characterized as a lightning strike.  You may see storm clouds gathering.  You may feel the wind pick up.  But when the lightning begins to strike, there is no one on earth who can predict where it will hit.

Lightning struck Nancy Lanza first, at the hand of the son she had so desperately tried to draw out, defend, enable, and help.  A new book by reporter Matthew Lysiak, Newtown: An American Tragedy, which was just released this week, apparently tries to sift through more of what Nancy Lanza did or didn’t do to prevent what happened.  According to the review in USA Today, “Lysiak concludes that most of the “what ifs” fall on Nancy Lanza.”

The storm that had been brewing for a long time then struck at Sandy Hook, taking the lives of 20 innocent children and 6 dedicated adults who died trying to defend them.

One minute after the first police officer arrived on the scene, the storm ended as violently as it began, with a bullet in the shooter’s head.

Those who could have given us motive are dead.  We will never have the answers to the questions that would satisfy those who suffered losses that day, or even satisfy the media, or either side of the gun lobby, or special needs parents like me, many of whom had to deal with ignorant people in the days after Sandy Hook, who assumed that any autistic child would someday just snap and be capable of these atrocities.

A year has passed, and nothing has really changed.  The pro and anti-gun lobby have raised record amounts of money, but neither side can actually point and say that something was changed.  Deep down, the sad truth is that no law can stop a lightning strike.  Pages 40 and 41 of the report list off the crimes that were committed that day in Newtown.  There are already laws against every single one of those crimes.  Adam Lanza did not care about those laws.  We are horrified and devastated at the deaths at Sandy Hook Elementary, but the dominoes all began to fall when Adam killed his own mother.  He murdered the one person who loved him the most and had tried the most to help him.  If he was willing to kill the one person who had cared and provided for him his entire life, should we really be surprised that he was also willing to kill complete strangers?

The families of the victims have asked that the media keep away and let them grieve in their own way on this sad day.  May the memories of their loved ones continue to be an inspiration and a blessing, both now and forevermore.

And may the name of Adam Lanza be blotted out for all eternity.