Saturday,  December 22, 2012 • Vol. 13--No. 157 • 23 of 27 •  Other Editions

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New details emerge about gunman and his mother a week after Connecticut school massacre

• NEWTOWN, Conn. (AP) -- He was the awkward, peculiar kid who wore the same clothes to school every day.
• He rarely spoke and even gave a school presentation entirely by computer, never uttering a word.
• He liked tinkering with computers and other gadgets, and seemed to enjoy playing a violent video game, choosing a military-style assault rifle as one of his weapons.
• New details about Adam Lanza emerged Friday, as the nation paused to mark one week since he slaughtered 20 first-graders and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown.
• Multiple funerals and visitations were held Friday, and at the hour of the attack, 9:30 a.m., a bell tolled 26 times, once for each victim killed at the school.
• ___

Predicting who is at risk for violence isn't easy, but experts say there are sometimes signs

• CHICAGO (AP) -- It happened after Columbine, Virginia Tech, Aurora, Colo., and now Sandy Hook: People figure there surely were signs of impending violence. But experts say predicting who will be the next mass shooter is virtually impossible -- partly because as commonplace as these calamities seem, they are relatively rare crimes.
• Still, a combination of risk factors in troubled kids or adults including drug use and easy access to guns can increase the likelihood of violence, experts say.
• But warning signs "only become crystal clear in the aftermath, said James Alan Fox, a Northeastern University criminology professor who has studied and written about mass killings.
• "They're yellow flags. They only become red flags once the blood is spilled," he said.
• Whether 20-year-old Adam Lanza, who used his mother's guns to kill her and then 20 children and six adults at their Connecticut school, made any hints about his plans isn't publicly known.
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