Metro

School gunman was troubled and shy, neighbors and classmates say

DEATH HOUSE: Police yesterday arrive at the home where troubled Adam Lanza (above) was believed to have lived with and murdered his mother. (
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Crazed kid-killer Adam Lanza was a troubled “genius” who was painfully awkward and shy.

“I know he had issues,” said Beth Israel, whose daughter, Alex, went to school with Lanza. “He was a really troubled kid. I think he had learning disabilities.”

Adam’s brother told investigators that the gunman was autistic, sources said. Israel described him to The Post as a sort of autistic savant, saying he was “very smart, but he had issues. He was a real genius.

“He was just a weird kid. He was a very quiet kid, a shy kid, maybe socially awkward,” Israel added.

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Connecticut neighbor Justin Germak, 17, said he knew that Lanza “had a condition.”

“You definitely notice it,” Germak said. “[He was] kind of, like, needy. I wouldn’t say antisocial, but struggling to be social.”

Lanza, 20, used two handguns, a Glock and a SIG Sauer, in the horrific massacre.

He left a high-powered, .223-caliber assault rifle in his car before his murderous rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, sources said.

His mother — who pals said like to host dice games at her home —was registered as the legal buyer of the guns, law- enforcement sources told CNN.

First cousin Andrew Lanza, 19, of Chicago, told The Post his family was “in shock and devastated” by the carnage.

“It’s hard for us because Adam’s part of our bloodline, no matter what,” he said.

“So to hear that someone in your own family took the lives of children — it’s heartbreaking.”

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The shooter carried his older brother’s ID card during the bloodbath, in which he killed his mother at home, killed 26 innocents at the school and finally committed suicide.

Investigators believe he stole the ID — leading cops and federal agents in two states to chase after his sibling, Ryan, 24.

NYPD cops went to Ryan’s workplace yesterday, thinking he was the shooter — and federal agents stormed his Hoboken, NJ, apartment building.

Agents quickly determined he had no apparent role in the shooting, sources said, adding that he has not been charged.

Israel said, “When I heard Ryan was the shooter, I was, like, ‘It has to be Adam.’ ”

Other Newtown residents also said they were also immediately sure Adam was the shooter.

“When we all saw on the news that they said the shooter was Ryan, we knew right away it wasn’t. We knew it had to be Adam,” said ‘My Place’ bar owner Louise Tambascio, who added that he believed Adam had been home-schooled.

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Adam lived with his mother in their Newtown home.

In high school he carried a black briefcase to class and didn’t appear in his senior yearbook — his spot on the page read “camera shy,” The New York Times reported.

He also belonged to a technology club whose members hooked up their computers into a small network to play games.

“My brother has always been a nerd,” Ryan said, according to Gloria Milas, whose son was a club member along with Adam Lanza. “He still wears a pocket protector.”

His father, Peter John Lanza, is divorced from Nancy, sources said.

Peter, an executive with GE Energy Financial Services, learned of his son’s involvement from a reporter outside his house, the Stamford Advocate reported.

“Is there something I can do for you?” he asked a reporter, the paper reported.

The father was horrified when a reporter broke the news to him, the paper wrote, and Peter declined to comment.

Additional reporting by Pedro Oliveira Jr., Jeane MacIntosh, Kate Kowsh and Isabel Vincent with Post Wire Services