US shooter's mum feared son was 'getting worse as he was burning himself'

A drinking buddy of Lanza said that her son had long been troubled and rarely came up in conversation.

"She just looked down at the glass and said, ‘I don't know. I'm worried I'm losing him,'" the bar pal, who asked not to be named, said.

"She said it was getting worse. She was having trouble reaching him," the pal said.

According to the New York Daily News, Adam, who killed his mother, 54, before going on a shooting spree at a school that killed 20 children and six others on Friday, was prone to hurting himself, the drinking buddy said.

"Nancy told me he was burning himself with a lighter. In the ankles or arms or something," he recalled of a conversation they had about a year ago.u00a0"It was like he was trying to feel something," he said.

Adam Lanza, the gunman responsible for the Newton school shooting (Pic-AFP)

Authorities said that the 20-year-old shot himself as police stormed the school that had become one of the most horrifying crime scenes in recent memory.

In hindsight, the conversation last week over craft beers could not have been more foreboding, the friend said.

"It was weird. She never really talked about (Adam)," he said, adding: "She mainly talked about her oldest kid (Ryan). I knew about the other one, but she never spoke much about him.

"She looked disturbed. She was looking down at her glass and kind of talking slowly," he added.

"Adam learned how to shoot a rifle by the time he was 9 years old," the friend, who added that he never met the disturbed kid, said, adding: "They would go to the range."u00a0