The town of Newtown, Connecticut, has torn down the house where in 2012 Adam Lanza started his killing rampage when he killed his mother before heading to the elementary school for more unspeakable carnage (20 children and six educators killed).
Newtown First Selectman Patricia Llodra said this comes as a "big relief. The house stood as a reminder to the neighbors and everyone in town of where that young man lived and grew up and did such horrible destruction to our community."
Hudson City Savings Bank turned the house and its 2.1-acre lot, appraised at $523,000, over to the town for free. The Lanza family sold the property to someone and the bank bought it up from that party.
The town also tore down the Sandy Hook Elementary School last year and a new school is being built on that same site. There's no word on what the town plans for the now empty site of the Lanza home.
This reminds us, of course, of the Amish school shooting in Lancaster County, PA, in 2006. Charles Carl Roberts IV killed five young people at West Nickel Mines School, a one-room schoolhouse in the community of Nickel Mines. In that case, the West Nickel Mines School was torn down, and a new one-room schoolhouse called the New Hope School was built elsewhere.
How eerie will it be for the future students of Newtown to be on that same ground, even though in a new building? How off-putting would it be to live in a new house built on the lot where Adam Lanza's house stood?
There was a similar horror up the road from my boyhood house when a young mom, having lost her way, killed her children in a hideously gory manner. For years afterwards, people would slow down driving past the house where '"it" happened.
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| Former Lanza home |
Perhaps the atmosphere above ground at the Lanza house is fouled and ruined for decent humanity, but what if the ground was used to grow food for the hungry, flowers for the beautification of all, and grazing land for animals? It could be a way to salvage flowers from the trashcan of life.
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