Police on Friday released documents and pictures of their investigation into Adam Lanza, the gunman who killed 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School on Dec. 14, 2012.
Several of the pictures reveal that Lanza, 20, lived around and was raised with guns at a very early age, the New York Daily News reported. Lanza's parents encouraged his relationship with the deadly assault rifles.
One picture shows Lanza, who at the time looks younger than the first-graders he killed, sitting in front of a rack with guns, holding a gun against his mouth with ammunition in his lap. What appears to be a grenade sits between the then toddler's legs.
Police did not say the child in the photograph was Lanza, but a source confirmed to the Daily News that it was. Police took a picture of an undated birthday card sent to Lanza by his father, Peter.
"Adam, Happy Birthday," the father wrote in the card, according to the Daily News. "Send me an e-mail when you want to go hiking or shooting."
Police also found old drawings done by Lanza. One drawing said "You are now not a teacher no more!" and showed someone with their hands being forced up, the Daily News reported.
Lanza's parents were married until 2009 when they got divorced, implying that both parents had a part in the murderer's upbringing.
Another picture shows an empty gun storage closet with a teddy bear siting on top, the Daily News reported. The birthday card and the closet were found in the Yogananda Street home where Lanza shot his mother, Nancy, four times before he went on a shooting rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary. Lanza killed 20 first-graders and six adults before taking his own life.
"It's clear that he had mental illness and intervention was not made," Nicole Hockley, whose 6-year-old son Dylan died by Lanza's hand, told CBS News. "And there was not responsible gun ownership, either."
See the photographs of young Lanza here.
