Metro

ATF agents raid Conn. gun shop where mother bought weapon; Nancy Lanza mourned

GUN NUTS: Details are emerging of killer Adam Lanza wanting to join the Marines in 2009 but being dissuaded by mom Nancy, who was remembered yesterday at a hush-hush service in New Hampshire.

GUN NUTS: Details are emerging of killer Adam Lanza wanting to join the Marines in 2009 but being dissuaded by mom Nancy, who was remembered yesterday at a hush-hush service in New Hampshire.

Nancy

Nancy (Reuters)

GUN NUTS: Details are emerging of killer Adam Lanza (left) wanting to join the Marines in 2009 but being dissuaded by mom Nancy (inset), who was remembered yesterday at a hush-hush service in New Hampshire. (
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Far from the trail of tears and emotional farewells for the Sandy Hook shooting victims, the mother of schoolhouse assassin Adam Lanza was quietly mourned yesterday in her New Hampshire hometown.

Nancy Lanza — who was her son’s first victim — was remembered at a private memorial attended by about 25 family members at an undisclosed location in Kingston under heavy police protection, authorities said.

“Family will make a determination at a later date and time as to where she will be buried,” Kingston Police Chief Donald Briggs, a longtime family friend, told The Post.

One week ago, Adam Lanza shot his mother in the head four times as she lay in bed. He then bolted from their home with her Bushmaster AR-15 semiautomatic assault rifle — and two powerful handguns she also owned — and opened fire in Sandy Hook Elementary School, slaughtering 20 first-graders and six educators.

Hours after the memorial ended, federal agents raided a Connecticut gun shop where the killer’s mother purchased one of her deadly weapons.

Although her guns appear to have been purchased legally, ATF agents were examining records at the East Windsor shop.

Yesterday’s private ceremony came as Nancy Lanza’s friends claimed that the doting mom had stopped her son from joining the Marines.

Adam Lanza started talking about joining the military in 2009, after the high-schooler stopped taking college-level classes at Western Connecticut State University, a Newtown merchant who knew Nancy told the Connecticut Post.

Another friend, Ellen Adriani, said Nancy told her about her son’s wishes and at first supported the idea, according to the newspaper.

After thinking about it more seriously, Nancy Lanza decided it wasn’t a good move for her son, who had been diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome and also reportedly had a medical condition that kept him from feeling physical pain.

“It became overwhelmingly clear to her that [military service] wasn’t right for him,” Adriani said.

Nancy “squashed” any notion of Adam joining the Marines or any branch of the armed services by reminding him “that he didn’t like to be touched,” Adriani told the paper, and that if he were injured, “doctors and medics would have to handle him to treat him.”

A spokeswoman for the Connecticut Medical Examiner’s Office this week told The Post that the bodies of Nancy and Adam had been claimed but said the funeral home that received them asked not to be identified.

Like his mom, Adam Lanza’s body has not yet been buried, Chief Briggs said.

“The family is discussing at this time and there will be information coming out at a later date,” Briggs said about funeral plans.

It wasn’t clear if Adam’s father, Peter Lanza, and older brother, Ryan, were among the mourners, who included Nancy’s mother, Dorothy Champion Hanson.

Nancy grew up on a farm in New Hampshire. Her mother, stepsister and other family members still live in the area, and her brother, James Champion, is a former Kingston police chief.

Also yesterday, Newtown Schools Superintendent Janet Robinson said Sandy Hook students will return to classes on Jan. 3 at the formerly vacant Chalk Hill school in Monroe, after a “soft opening” on Jan. 2 to get accustomed to the change.