Lots of speculation in the media about motives, and like everything else we’ve seen so far this should be taken with a grain of caution. Fox News is reporting the madman in Newtown snapped over his mother’s attempts to have him committed to a mental facility against his will and targeted the school because he believed his mother cared more for the students than him.
The gunman who slaughtered 20 children and six adults at a Connecticut elementary school may have snapped because his mother was planning to commit him to a psychiatric facility, according to a lifelong resident of the area who was familiar with the killer’s family and several of the victims’ families.
(The murderer) targeted Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown after killing his mother early Friday because he believed she loved the school “more than she loved him,” said Joshua Flashman, 25, who grew up not far from where the shooting took place. Flashman, a U.S. Marine, is the son of a pastor at an area church where many of the victims’ families worship.
Much time will pass before we know the truth about what drove him to kill. He was clearly not well and his mother was ill-equipped to deal with him by herself.
Related update:
Psychiatrist: (Killer) Was ‘Pseudocommando’ with ‘Wounded Narcissism’
The report continues: “[The pseudocommando] most often kills in public during the daytime. And has no escape planned. Pseudocommandos are ‘collectors of injustice’ who nurture their wounded narcissism and ultimately retreat into a fantasy life of violence and revenge.”
Knoll wrote that killers like Lanza have an “obliterative mindset … his ‘self’ is already dead and … his physical death is of little consequence” in his own mind.
