University: Newtown gunman took college courses at 16

Undated photo of Adam Lanza / AP Photo

DANBURY, Conn. The gunman who killed 26 children and adults in an elementary school took college classes when he was only 16, a spokesman for Western Connecticut State University said Monday.

Paul Steinmetz, spokesman for the Danbury school, confirmed that Adam Lanza earned a 3.26 grade point average while a student there. He dropped out of a German language class and withdrew from a computer science class, but earned an A in a computer class, A-minus in American history and B in macroeconomics.

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He participated when called on by the teacher in his evening course on introductory German, according to Dot Stasny, who was one of about a dozen other students in the class in the spring of 2009. She said she and a classmate once invited him out to a bar but he declined, saying he was only 17.

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"On one side, he did something unspeakable, but on the other, that's not how I remember him," Stansy told CBS News correspondent Seth Doane. "I remember him as the nice kid that, you know, I sat near to in class. We'd joked, he'd laugh, that kind of thing."

Stasny said she saw him later when he came in as a customer at a video game store where she was working. She said she shared a laugh with him about how difficult the German class was. She told him she failed one of the exams, and he mentioned he got a D.

"I just remember him as a nice, quiet kid," she said.

Steinmetz says Lanza was among a small group of 16-year-olds among the school's 5,000 undergraduates.

The Hartford Courant and The Wall Street Journal first reported Lanza's academic record at Western Connecticut State.

Steinmetz said Lanza took his last class in the summer of 2009 and didn't return.

Sources told CBS News correspondent John Miller that Lanza had attended Sandy Hook Elementary, the site of the shooting, at one time, but it is unclear when or for how long. Lanza's aunt, Marsha, told CBS News his mother eventually homeschooled her son after disputes with the local school district.

"[Nancy, Lanza's mother] had issues with school ... She battled with the school district,'' said Marsha Lanza. "I'm not 100 percent certain if it was behavior, learning disabilities, I really don't know. But he was very, very bright. He was smart."

Nancy Lanza was found dead in the Newtown, Conn., home she shared with Adam, her youngest of two children. Police believe Adam Lanza killed his mother, and then collected guns registered to her in their home to use in his rampage at the elementary school.

[susanlynnanders]

well, wikipedia knows... LOL, what a joke

[OldProfessor]

Here is what Luke Woodham wrote of his motivation in the school shooting at Pearl MS in 1997....before he started shooting:

"I am not insane, I am angry. I killed because people like me are mistreated every day. I did this to show society, push us and we will push back. ... All throughout my life, I was ridiculed, always beaten, always hated. Can you, society, truly blame me for what I do? Yes, you will. ... It was not a cry for attention, it was not a cry for help. It was a scream in sheer agony saying that if you can't pry your eyes open, if I can't do it through pacifism, if I can't show you through the displaying of intelligence, then I will do it with a bullet." Taken from Wikipedia