Documents reveal Jared Lee Loughner’s state of mind and concerns of family and friends prior to his shooting rampage in Tucson. Loughner displayed increasingly erratic behavior prior to the shooting.
His mother described a tortured young man who appeared to be talking to people that weren’t there. She said that they taken a shotgun away from him when he was prohibited from attending Pima Community College.
His parents despaired over the loss of their son as his behavior became more erratic, “I tried to talk to him. But you can’t, he wouldn’t let you,” he said “Lost, lost, and just didn’t want to communicate with me no more.” However, his parents never sought psychiatric medical care for their obviously ill son.
Although they had started disabling their son’s car, it was not disabled on day of the shooting. His father said that Loughner drove away from their home at 6 a.m. and returned an hour or two later with a black backpack.
Loughner shot 19 people, killing six of them. Loughner avoided a possible death sentence when he pleaded guilty in
November to 19 federal charges. He was sentenced in November to seven consecutive life sentences, plus 140 years. He is serving his sentence at a federal facility in Springfield, Mo., where he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and forcibly given psychotropic drug treatments.
In the wake of the shooting political opportunists focused on gun control rather than the neglect of the mentally ill.