Well they sure searched the trunk. That’s were they found the shotgun.Still I didn’t think you had to have a warrent to search property of a dead person. A search warrent is issued to protect the rights of whomever’s property you are searching. In this case, they are both dead. And I’m pretty sure your civil rights are terminated, when you are. Terminated that is....maybe not?
They EVENTUALLY searched the trunk. We see scenes from a helicopter during the night.
What remains debatable is if they searched the car to throw out the clothing items as Uncle Chip claims and to mention a rifle and a shotgun on the scanner early on in the incident.
The shotgun reference could have been because they saw a shotgun inside OR they saw the shells.
They may not have known the owner of the car (Lanza’s mother) was dead when they got the warrants. After all, one warrant was for the house, which is where they found her, so it stands to reason that they probably got the warrant before they knew she was dead.