Ryan Lanza is already grieving and no doubt floored by the deaths of his brother, Adam Lanza, their mother Nancy and the 26 other people Adam killed yesterday.
As if that weren’t enough to process, he was erroneously named as the man responsible for the Connecticut shooting by overzealous media outlets at first.
Many TV news outlets and websites were scrambling after reporting Ryan Lanza, 24, was the shooter, even though state and federal officials did not confirm this.
It is now believed that Adam Lanza, 20, had an ID of Ryan’s on him, leading to the initial confusion. But for Ryan, it made for an interesting few hours at work.
Ryan, 24, has worked at Ernst & Young in New Jersey for four years, following in the footsteps of his father, a former partner in the large accounting firm.
Ryan was at work yesterday and not a suspect in the case for even an instant, but news outlets claimed his killed 26 people in Newtown, Conn.
Some even splashed his photo on screen.
Not surprisingly, he was inundated with posts, texts and calls, after which someone began posting on his Facebook page (presumably Ryan) that he is NOT the killer.
Because he was not involved whatsoever, it’s unclear if he realized his brother was involved at the time the media was initially reporting the story.
NBC, one of, if not the first to report Ryan’s involvement, later said that an ID bearing his name on Adam’s person made them believe Ryan Lanza was the culprit.
Not the case, clearly.
In any case, it’s the last thing Ryan and Peter Lanza care about now. They are said to be “in shock” over what happened, much like the rest of the nation and world.
Both spoke to the FBI in Hoboken, N.J., but “are not suspects, they have no involvement,” a source says. Ryan, the source adds, is as clean as they come.
The Lanza brothers’ parents are divorced, and Adam lived with mother Nancy in the same town where the massacre – one of the worst in U.S. history – took place.
It is believed the guns used were registered in her name.
The first Adam Lanza photos were released to the media last night, along with a portrait of a young man whose troubles apparently went unrecognized.
“It looks like there’s mental history there,” a law enforcement source says.