Even at 5 years old, Adam Lanza was deemed a dangerous kid — by his own mother.
The man who was once the babysitter for Sandy Hook killer Adam Lanza tells reporters of the haunting “instructions” — better yet, warning — that Lanza’s mother, Nancy, once gave him about being left alone with her child.
Ryan Kraft is still shellshocked from across the country in Hermosa Beach, Calif., where he learned the news that the little boy he watched more than 15 years ago went on a murderous rampage through Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., killing 20 children and six adults. He preceded the campus carnage by shooting his own mother in the face twice with the weapons that she bought.
Strangely enough, Kraft was not surprised that the boy did something bad. Nevertheless, he was in a state of arrested breathing when he tuned into the news coming from across the continent.
“I just couldn’t think for a little while. I was shaken,” he told CBS2 and KCAL9 reporter Brittney Hopper.
“I’m still numb to it,” Kraft says of the tragedy at Sandy Hook. “I haven’t processed it … and 15 years ago it could have been me.”
When Kraft was 10, his family moved to Newtown from Hermosa Beach, and the Lanza family moved next door six months later. When he turned 14 years old, Kraft was asked to babysit Adam Lanza. But he still remembers the disturbing and surprising instructions by his mother, Nancy, that day:
“She told me to keep an eye on him at all times, to never turn my back, not even to go to the bathroom,” Kraft said.
Now we know that, even at just 5 years old, Adam Lanza posed enough of a serious threat to older people that his mother had to warn Kraft that to maintain his safety that he had to keep his eyes on the child at all times.
Secondly, Kraft confirms that Adam Lanza was always a solitary child who never developed an ability to form relationships with anyone else.
“Whenever we were doing anything, like building Legos, or playing video games, he was always focused. He was in his own world,” Kraft says.
Another person who was familiar with Adam Lanza, Richard Novia, the Newtown School District’s head of security until 2008, has similar memories of Lanza:
“Have you found his best friend? Have you found a friend?” Novia asked. “You’re not going to. He was a loner.”
A former classmate, Olivia DeVivo, says that in retrospect, the signs were there that Lanza could commit such a heinous act, but she wouldn’t want to vilify an entire group of people based on casual acquaintance.
“He was very different and very shy and didn’t make an effort to interact with anybody,” she said.
DeVivo said that, while other students hauled backpacks to school, Lanza always carried a briefcase and wore his shirts buttoned up to the top button, another clear sign that he was a different kid. She said he seemed bright but never really participated in class.
“Now looking back, it’s kind of like `OK, he had all these signs,’ but you can’t say every shy person would do something like this,” said DeVivo.
Listen below to Ryan Kraft’s interview live below.
