May 27, 2020 | 10:35am | Updated May 27, 2020 | 12:49pm
The University of Connecticut student being hunted for a killing spree grew up on the same street as Sandy Hook shooter Adam Lanza — and claimed he “snapped” in the same way, according to reports.
Peter Manfredonia — who is accused of killing two men and injuring another — left the chilling message amid a series of scrawls on his dorm walls, the South Passaic Daily Voice said.
“We saw what happened when Adam snapped,” one message said, as first reported by student reporters at YourContent.com.
“Now they see what happens when I snap.”
Records show that Manfredonia grew up in Newtown just a few houses away from Lanza, the deranged 20-year-old who slaughtered 20 children and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012.
His family moved to 16 Yogananda St. in 1997, the year he was born — and just a year after Lanza’s family moved a short stroll away, at number 36 on the same street, the records show.
Manfredonia’s family appeared to still be at the house in 2012, when Lanza started his massacre by shooting his mother dead in their house.
It suggests the pair grew up as children on the same street, with Lanza just five years older — and on a street named after a Hindu spiritual leader who introduced Westerners to yoga and wrote a series of essays on inner peace, the Connecticut Post has noted.
Manfredonia had previously written about school shootings, calling them “an epidemic plaguing this great country we live in” in a 2018 post.
In another post from last September, he announced that by completing a triathlon, he raised funds for Sandy Hook Promise — an advocacy group founded by several people whose children died in the massacre.
He was still being hunted Wednesday, accused of killing Ted DeMers, 62, last Friday as well as his former classmate, 23-year-old Nicholas Eisele, who was found dead inside his Derby home Sunday morning.
Manfredonia’s family, through their attorney Michael Dolan, and authorities have urged him to surrender.
Dolan told the Connecticut Post that the young man had “mental health issues” but “no history of violence.”
“This really came out of nowhere,” he insisted.
UConn declined to tell the Connecticut Post if Manfredonia had a disciplinary record at the school.
“The horrific and incomprehensible loss of life is reminiscent of so many other tragedies at so many other places around the country and the world,” UConn president Tom Katsouleas said in a statement.
“Though rare, we have been sadly reminded that none are immune from such random acts, and that they don’t always happen somewhere else.”
