As Final Report Is Released, Sandy Hook Investigation Is Said to Be Over

The state’s Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection said that the release of the full report, which included many redactions, “is indicative that this State Police criminal investigation is concluded.”

Questions of how and when to release sensitive investigative details from the shooting have been prevalent since shortly after the massacre, which left 20 first graders and six adults from the school dead. The shooter, Adam Lanza, 20, also killed his mother and himself.

In a letter accompanying the report, Reuben F. Bradford, the commissioner of the state’s Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection, said that the names and “contextually identifying information of involved children” were withheld, including descriptions of the children, their clothing and their belongings. He added that “all visual images depicting the deceased have been withheld, as well as written descriptions whose disclosure would be highly offensive to a reasonable person and would violate the constitutional rights of the families.”

Mr. Bradford said that balancing the “often competing interests of government transparency and individual privacy has been difficult.”

Stephen J. Sedensky III, the state’s attorney in Danbury, had fought to keep private the recordings of 911 calls made from the school. But Judge Eliot D. Prescott of the Superior Court in New Britain ruled last month that there was no legal basis to keep the recordings secret; they were released on Dec. 4. He said their release “may serve to vindicate and support the professionalism and bravery of first responders.”

The records’ release on Friday followed the issuance of a far shorter report last month by Mr. Sedensky’s office. At the time, the account provided the most detail yet about Mr. Lanza’s final months — his bedroom windows covered with black trash bags, as he was preoccupied with video games and spoke to his mother only over email, even though they shared a floor in a house on Yogananda Street.

But the state’s attorney’s report did not offer a motive for the massacre. It also did not name the children who died, nor did it include graphic descriptions of the crime scene.

“There is no clear indication why Sandy Hook Elementary School was selected,” Mr. Sedensky wrote then, “other than perhaps its close proximity to the shooter’s home.”

Mr. Lanza had created a spreadsheet of some of the worst massacres in American history, according to the authorities, and seemed to carefully plan his attack. According to information from a GPS device, he had driven to the area of the school one day earlier, while his mother was away.

Around 9:34 a.m. on Dec. 14, Mr. Lanza blasted through the glass windows at the school’s locked entrance, the police said. At 9:40, he shot himself in a first-grade classroom.

Mr. Bradford, from the Emergency Services and Public Protection Department, said that while the investigation was closed “for administrative purposes,” additional supplemental reports might be released in the coming months.

Yahoo Local News – New York Times

http://newyork.greatlocalnews.info/?p=19704

via Great Local News: New York http://newyork.greatlocalnews.info