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Mother devoted her life to Adam Lanza – then he ended it

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BETRAYED: Nancy Lanza, mother of the gunman, had “loved him more than anything,” a friend says. (
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Nancy Lanza doted on her son — and he repaid her by fatally blasting her four times in the head and killing 26 others with a gun she taught him to use.

In the weeks leading up to Adam Lanza’s rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School, his mom was focused on helping the troubled but brilliant 20-year-old build a life for himself. He was mulling a move to a new town for college — and she was ready to go with him, her friends told The Post.

“She doted on that child. She loved him more than anything. Nancy’s life revolved around him,” said Russ Hanoman, who knew Nancy for seven years and had spent time with Adam.

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Nancy, 52, was dedicated to her youngest son — described as “a near-genius” who suffered from the autism-related Asperger’s syndrome — and she had spent months going over his options for engineering schools, Hanoman said.

“They had recently gone to many different colleges looking for the right program for Adam, and the right living situation,” he said.

“He wanted to study engineering. Nancy was going to move wherever he was going to go. Not to live with him but to live near him.

“They were looking at schools in Seattle and one of the Carolinas. “It was his goal to be independent.”

Another friend, Rich Collins, said Nancy had a hard time dealing with her son’s difficulties — especially his inability to express love.

“She would get very upset that he wouldn’t let her hug him,” said Collins, who himself has a son with autism and would often commiserate with Nancy when the two would meet at a local bar.

“She was proud of the boys, but she would get upset about Adam not being affectionate,” he said.

Nancy would take Adam to a nearby shooting range to try to forge a bond with him, he said.

“This was something she could do to connect with her son, who couldn’t show emotions toward her,” Collins, 54, told The Post.

But that gun training turned deadly Friday, when Lanza shot his mother multiple times as she lay in her bed in their $1.6 million Newtown, Conn., home.

Sources said Nancy was shot in the head four times at close range, leaving her nearly unrecognizable. She was wearing her pajamas when she was slain, The Washington Post reported.

Adam — who had learned to drive only last summer — then took her black Honda to nearby Sandy Hook Elementary, where he unleashed the slaughter, opening fire in two classrooms and gunning down 20 first-graders and six educators before blowing his brains out with a single shot to the head.

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Adam had attended Sandy Hook as a child, then the St. Rose of Lima Church’s Catholic school. He was later home-schooled and graduated from the local high school early, Nancy’s friends said.

A spokesman for Western Connecticut State University said Adam had started at that college at age 16, taking six classes at the school in 2008 and 2009. There was no indication of any disciplinary problems while he was there.

Nancy’s older son, Ryan, 24, graduated from college, works in New York and lives in Hoboken.

“She always talked about her children. She was very proud of both of them,” another friend, Mark Tambascio, said. “But it was harder with Adam. She constantly tried to help Adam.”

She assisted Adam, a gaming and tech enthusiast, in finding odd jobs fixing computers.

After Friday’s shooting, detectives pored over his computer in search of clues to what might have triggered his rampage.

Despite Adam’s unsocial behavior, Tambascio said, “Nancy never talked about him being violent. She was not afraid of him.”

Connecticut State Police spokesman Lt. J. Paul Vance said Lanza used a Bushmaster AR-15 “assault-type weapon” in the attack. But he also had a Glock 10mm handgun and a Sig Sauer 9mm handgun with him — and was armed with 30-round magazines and “hundreds” of bullets for each weapon, Vance said.

Investigators also found a shotgun in the Honda.

Vance would not say which weapon was used to kill Nancy Lanza. She had legally bought the guns, police officials said.

“I remember when Nancy bought her Sig and Glock guns,” Hanoman said. “She took great pride in them.”

He said the divorced mom started shooting about three years ago after visiting a range with a friend. She began taking Adam along to the Blue Trails Range in Wallingford, Conn. Range owner David Lyman slammed his door on a reporter yesterday.Adam enjoyed playing the video game “Dance Dance Revolution” at the local mall and was “meek and mild and quietly brilliant,” Hanoman said.

“He felt more comfortable with Nancy and people my age,” he said.

“He thought he had nothing in common with people his age. He had no contact with little children.”

At home, Adam often stayed in his room, said family friend Ellen Adriani. Nancy would plan his vegan meals days in advance and was teaching him to cook.

“His house was a safe place for him,” Adriani added.

The shooter, she said, had a medical condition in which he couldn’t feel pain.

“Nancy was teaching him to cut up fruit. Because he couldn’t feel any pain, he had to be careful with the knife,” she said.

“When he was sick, he would ask Nancy to sleep outside his door. He wanted her to be there, but at a distance. He’d check periodically during the night to make sure she was still there.”

Nancy’s former sister-in-law, Marsha Lanza, yesterday told reporters Nancy was a doomsday “prepper” who had turned her home into a “fortress.”

“Nancy had a survivalist philosophy, which is why she was stockpiling guns,” Marsha Lanza said from her home in Crystal Lake, Ill. “She was stockpiling food. We talked about preparing for the economy collapsing.”

Meanwhile, Sandy Hook pupils will return to school this week, but in a different location, Chalk HS in Monroe, Conn.

It’s possible Sandy Hook could be shuttered permanently.

Additional reporting by Erin Calabrese