TUCSON — Federal authorities filed murder charges Sunday against 22-year-old Jared Loughner, as new evidence suggested the alleged gunman in Saturday’s rampage had fixated on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., while his mental health deteriorated.
Loughner appeared to have planned the shooting, according to court documents. In a safe at his parents’ home, investigators found an envelope with the words “I planned ahead” and “my assassination” written on it, along with the name “Giffords.” Loughner’s signature is also believed to be on the envelope, the complaint says.
In the same safe, authorities found a 2007 letter to Loughner from Giffords, using congressional stationery to thank him for attending a “Congress on Your Corner” event in Tucson. Saturday’s shooting took place at another such event, where Giffords was meeting constituents outside a supermarket.
Loughner allegedly shot Giffords in the head during the event, then fired his handgun repeatedly into the crowd around her. In all, 20 people were struck by bullets. Six of them died, including a federal judge and a 9-year-old girl.
Giffords remains sedated and in critical condition, doctors said. After surgery on the wound — in which a single bullet traversed the left side of her skull — they said Giffords was able to follow simple commands, such as holding up two fingers when asked.
“This is about as good as good can get” with a bullet injury to the brain, trauma physician Peter Rhee said.
Loughner will be arraigned today at a federal courthouse in Phoenix. He has been charged with two counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder.
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said in a statement Sunday that FBI Director Robert Mueller was traveling to Arizona to help coordinate the investigation.
Authorities said Sunday that Loughner appeared to have acted alone, without ties to larger anti-government or hate groups. A second “person of interest” seen with Loughner near the shooting scene turned out to be the cabdriver who had dropped him off. Authorities said the man had no connection to the shootings.
The court documents also said U.S. District Judge John Roll, who died in the shooting, was not targeted in advance. Roll — who had received death threats because of previous rulings — was in the crowd around Giffords. He had come to the event, authorities said, because he wanted to talk to Giffords about the volume of federal cases in Arizona.
Transformed life
New accounts also emerged Sunday about the past few years of Loughner’s life, showing that the slim, dark-haired man had undergone a frightening transformation after high school.
Alex Montanaro, a childhood friend of Loughner’s, said Sunday night that Loughner had met Giffords at a public event at a Tucson mall in 2007. He said Loughner had called him the next day and recounted the conversation.
Loughner, whose videos show an obsession with grammar and words, asked Giffords “something like, ‘Why do words mean what they mean?’ ” Montanaro recalled. “And apparently she was just sort of dumbfounded and answered him in Spanish.”
“He was just sort of annoyed that he didn’t get the answer that he was hoping for,” Montanaro said, adding that he wasn’t sure what that hoped-for answer was. But he said he couldn’t recall Loughner, whom he saw intermittently, speaking about Giffords often after that.
In his years at Mountain View High School, friends remembered Loughner as odd but generally amiable. He wore shorts some days, like many of the other students, and dark “goth”-style clothes with chains on others.
Loughner had had a bitter streak and showed signs of drug use, they said, but was still enough of a joiner to play in the jazz band.
“He was just a normal kid who doodled and wrote things on his notebooks,” said high school classmate Michelle Martinez, 22.
If Loughner was living at the edge of the mainstream at Mountain View, afterward he fell off it.
After high school, Loughner showed growing signs of mental instability. By last summer, when he was a student in an elementary algebra class at Tucson’s Pima Community College, he was a terrifying presence for teachers and students.
A student in the class, Lynda Sorenson, 52, said she was immediately worried about Loughner. She said Loughner sat in class with a crazed-looking grin and that she had seen him walking in tight circles, around and around, in the school courtyard. She feared that Loughner might become violent and she would have to flee — concerns she shared with friends and family in a series of e-mails.
“We do have one student in the class who was disruptive today,” Sorenson wrote June 1. “He scares me a bit. … Hopefully he will be out of class very soon, and not come back with an automatic weapon.”
The instructor of the class, Benjamin McGahee, was no less concerned and said he sought repeatedly for college officials to remove Loughner, but they did not until after a series of confrontations. Loughner later agreed to withdraw from the school.
Rejected by the Army
Loughner posted a series of videos on YouTube, in which he espoused bizarre and often incoherent arguments about mind control, grammar and government abuses. In one video, a hooded figure burns an American flag in the desert, while on the soundtrack a hard-rock singer shrieks, “Let the bodies hit the floor!” In one of the videos, Loughner referenced applying to join the U.S. Army.
He was rejected for Army service in 2008, Army officials said. A military official who spoke on condition of anonymity said Loughner failed because of drugs. It was unclear, however, if he had failed urinalysis testing or if his drug history or related questioning led to his rejection.
On Sunday, Loughner’s home on Tucson’s North Soledad Avenue was empty of the investigators and police cruisers that had crammed the street a day earlier. There was no sign of life at the Loughner home — set among modest ranch houses and split- levels.
Neighbors said their interactions with the family were largely limited to watching Loughner’s father restore old cars in his driveway.
They described Loughner’s parents as loners who rarely spoke even to their immediate neighbors.
“You try to say something, (and) they’d just ignore you and turn around and walk back into the house,” said Ron Johnson, 60, a retiree who lives directly opposite the Loughners’ tan one-story home. “The kid — I never talked to him. He acted just like his parents and ignored you.”
President to lead moment of silence to honor victims
President Barack Obama will observe a moment of silence for the Arizona shooting victims this morning, and he called on all Americans to do so at the same time in a show of national unity.
In a Sunday statement, Obama said the moment of silence, which he will mark at 11 a.m. EST with staff on the White House South Lawn, will “honor the innocent victims of the senseless tragedy in Tucson, Ariz., including those still fighting for their lives.”
Obama signed a proclamation Sunday calling for flags to be flown at half-staff. The Washington Post
