Ex-babysitter says Newtown, Conn. school shooter Adam Lanza's mother warned: Don't turn your back

[FarCenter]

A man who says he once babysat for Newtown, Conn., gunman Adam Lanza says he recalls Lanza's mother warning him never to turn his back on the boy - not even to go to the bathroom.

...

But, he tells CBS station KCBS in Los Angeles, he was once a student at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., and babysat for Lanza when Lanza was about 9 or 10 and Kraft was 14 or 15.

...

Kraft tells KCBS when he first heard about the shooting and that Lanza was involved, "I just couldn't think for a little while. I was shaking."

He says he recalls Nancy Lanza cautioning him never to turn his back on Adam -- "to keep an eye on him at all times ... to never turn my back, or even to go to the bathroom or anything like that."

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57559502/ex-babysitter-says-newtown-conn-school-shooter-adam-lanzas-mother-warned-dont-turn-your-back/

[virtualobserver]

1. but still, maybe I should teach him to shoot accurately.......

n/t

[FarCenter]

2. Yes there is lots of denial -- especially among those wealthy enough to keep crazy aunt in the attic

[virtualobserver]

5. chilling....a 9 year old that you can't turn your back on.....

quite illuminating.

[bluestate10]

10. The instincts of a parent sometimes can't be explained.

I posted an article yesterday about the experiences of a mother who knew her child was dangerous and struggled with that child daily, without meaningful support from the rest of society. The mother in the article that I posted called the cops to help with her son twice, but if that intervention had gone wrong, her son picked up a knife or gun and was killed, she would blame herself until her dying breath.
Inexplicably, the Lanza mother went from fearing her son to having guns within his reach. Maybe she started by buying a gun to protect her from a violent son, but I fail to see how a mother could pull a trigger on her son. None of us know what went on during the last seconds of the Lanza mother's life. May be she did attempt to stop her son. May be she had a gun drawn on him but could not pull the trigger, allowing to take the gun and kill her. We will never know. As things now stand, she was a person that enabled a monster.

I have read post on Du that range from no action on guns to taking all guns away from the public. The reasonable solution is somewhere in between. Millions of sane people like guns, shooting guns, taking guns apart, hunting. Many people like the rush that comes from shooting an assault rifle. To the no guns people, you aren't going to take away people's guns, this comes from a person that doesn't own a gun and see no reason for owning one. To the people that always cry Second Amendment when regulation of guns come up, get a fucking clue, the Founders of the country lived during a time when most of the people lived on farms or in small towns and the only mode for raising an army was to bring together farmers and small townspeople and their guns, we have a professional fucking military to protect us now and most of us live in cities and suburbs where a trained cop is minutes away. My solution is multi-fold.

First, we must address the destruction of mental health care in this country, we are letting dangerous people on to the street and not addressing issues like the Lanza mother faces or the woman of a mentally ill teen, whose story I posted yesterday. We need to make it easier to institutionalize mentally ill people and build institutions for those people that are safe and allow them to live as normal a life as possible while they get professional care. We must not tolerate any abuse of people in institutions and must insure that only caring, professional people work with them - if there is abuse, we must investigate, take appropriate action and then make reforms to insure the abuse doesn't happen again.

Second, we must pass and implement uniform federal laws that cover background checks, gun registration and owner control of guns. The first two should be logical no brainers, even though now, they aren't. The third is more problematic because if not done properly would put owners at risk of lawsuits or jail time when they had taken proper pre-cautions, but because of circumstances they could not control, their guns were taken and used in a crime or mass killing. Every gun owner should know where their guns are and perform frequent checks on the guns to insure they are secure. But people travel, if the guns are taken while the person is away and used in a crime, that person shouldn't be subject to the same fines and penalties that a careless gun owner should face. EVERYONE that owns registered guns should be expected to report their theft as soon as the owners become aware that guns have gone missing.

Third, as a society, we must get serious about bullying and insure that children and people are not bullied or singled out because they are different or physically weaker than others. We must teach children that being a bully is not about being strong.

[FarCenter]

13. Mrs. Lanza grew up in southern New Hampshire, and had grown up with guns.

It is unlikely that she bought the guns to protect herself from Adam.

Given the gun laws in CT, it is somewhat likely that she had the Bushmaster .223 from before the law was passed and her possession of it was grandfathered in. She may have brought it from NH. However, she certainly had the money to hire a lawyer to do the paperwork to buy one.

[Barack_America]

6. I wouldn't be surprised if that's the one thing they bonded over.

Sad.

[malaise]

12. Yep you have to wonder n/t

[alcibiades_mystery]

3. She's a Responsible Gun Owner (tm)!

Of course she is. She has an emotionally disturbed kid who even at age 9 must be watched like a hawk lest some tragedy happen, but she's got a goddamn arsenal in her house. Hey, it's just a tool and commodity like any other, screech the gun manufacturers and their sucker flunkies.

[Brickbat]

4. If I had a dollar for every time a parent said that when I was babysitting...

[marybourg]

7. A child that can't be trusted for a minute being left

with a 14 year old! Amazing!

[Ganja Ninja]

8. Now keep in mind this:

His Mother from reports was a right wing doomsday freak, stockpiling food, water, ammo and guns. With that in mind it was not unlikely FOX News was a near constant accompaniment to the environment in the home. Add in the predictions of doom if Obama were re-elected. And bear in mind the approach this week of the Mayan end of the world prophecy. Who knows if his mom believed this but I'm just saying - doomsday'er!

The point I'm getting at here is did the effect all of this had on the kid's mother finally drive him to just say "fuck it! end this now!"

[FarCenter]

9. Yes, and I wonder whether she was also on meds.

[Warren DeMontague]

11. Alex Jones.

Im willing to bet she was a fan.

[renie408]

14. First off...do we believe this?

I mean, could the guy be saying it for the attention?

[FarCenter]

15. Yes -- it would also be consistent with their parenting counselor saying that Mrs Lanza did not want

to leave Adam alone.

Kraft is a young guy out in LA. He would not get enough attention to make it worthwhile to lie.