Private service held for gunman's mother

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KINGSTON, N.H., Dec. 21 (UPI) -- Nancy Lanza, the first victim of her son's mass shooting in Newtown, Conn., was remembered in a private memorial service, a police official said.

Donald Briggs, the police chief in Kingston, N.H., the town in the southeastern corner of the state where Lanza grew up, would not say where Thursday's service was held, the New Hampshire Union Leader reported. There was a gathering in the afternoon at the Kingston home of Lanza's brother, James Champion.

Those who arrived at the 18th-century house did not speak to the news media and stayed away from the road, The New York Times reported. A sign posted on the door requested privacy.

Lanza was shot allegedly by her son, Adam, 20, before he headed to the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown and gunned down 20 children and six women. Funeral arrangements for Adam Lanza, who took his own life as police closed in, have not been announced.

A reporter who encountered Champion at the Kingston post office Thursday morning was refused an interview, the Times said.

"It's a hard time," he said, shaking his head. "It's a very hard time right now."

Lanza grew up in Kingston, a town with fewer than 7,000 residents near the Massachusetts border and a few miles from the coast. She lived there until 1998, when she moved to Newtown with her sons and then-husband.

Champion is a former police captain in the town and is now a part-time officer.