Newtown: An American Tragedy by Matthew Lysiak Read Free Book Online Page A

with the general student body in the classroom and did well academically. Parent-teacher conferences were always uneventful, with Adam’s teachers giving nothing but good reports, other than occasionally reversing letters.
    At home she noticed that more time was passing between temper tantrums. His Aspergers and sensory perception disorder were being managed.
    “It’s been frustrating and it’s been a battle,” Nancy emailed a friend as the fourth-grade year wound to an end. “But overall I have to admit that Adam has been making quite a bit of progress. I’m not sure we could have received this level of attention back home.”
    Although awkward, socially backward, and occasionally picked on and bullied, his family would later remember Adam’s time at Sandy Hook Elementary as “the best times of his life.”
    I n January 2003, more changes came as Adam entered Newtown’s Reed Intermediate School for fifth and sixth grades. Lanza and hisclassmates were the first fifth-graders to attend the intermediate school, moving from Sandy Hook Elementary midyear in 2003.
    Again, Adam’s odd behavior made the eleven-year-old stick out to classmates. “He was extremely introverted and didn’t talk to anyone,” recalled Dan Lynch, a former classmate. “He was really skittish, and anxious. He kept to himself and everyone left him alone.”
    In the fall of 2004, Adam entered seventh grade at Newtown Middle School, and for the first three marking periods, his performance on paper academically was great. He achieved mostly A grades and his teacher described him as having a “positive attitude” and being “fully engaged and respectful.” He also earned an A in gym class and won the praise of his band teacher.
    Middle school, however, would represent a turning point in his young life. While in elementary school, Adam rarely had to move from room to room, something he had always struggled with; now that he was entering middle school he was frequently required to change classes.
    Classmates could see the terror on his face as he tried to navigate a hallway. “He always looked terrified as he walked down the hall. His shoulders would slump and he would cling to the wall,” one classmate said. “I remember thinking that he walks like he expects someone to hit him.”
    That year, his inability to deal with sights, sounds, and textures started to become more acute. From the din of the lunch bell to the commotion of students rushing through the halls, everything around Adam had become a source of constant irritation. The struggles were spilling over to his home life, too, where the outburstsstarted to become more violent as Adam became increasingly resistant about going to school.
    Nancy fought with the school to accommodate her son’s condition. “This is torture for my son,” she told one school official.
    The school did little to appease the angry mother, at least as far as Nancy was concerned. In turn, Nancy had developed a reputation as “tightly wound,” “demanding,” and with a “flare for dramatics” among some of the staff.
    In 2005, Nancy had become fed up with how the academic district was dealing, or not dealing, with her son’s difficulties. She pulled him out Newtown Middle School in April 2005 and enrolled him at St. Rose of Lima, the Catholic school in Newtown. Nancy wasn’t religious, but she thought the smaller class sizes would ensure that her son received the kind of personal attention he so desperately needed.
    Still, Adam’s troubles continued to escalate. He just could not fit in. While most children were talking about Avril Lavigne or the latest Harry Potter book, on the rare occasions when he did speak, it was often about fifties rock music or aliens.
    “Adam had a difficult time making the adjustment from public school to St. Rose,” said Monsignor Robert Weiss, the pastor of the parish. “He struggled.”
    More bad news came the Lanza family’s way when a teacher discovered a collection