As a high school freshman, Jared Lee Loughner seemed an average kid with a head of curly hair and a talent for the saxophone. But in the ensuing years his classmates described a youth growing increasingly disturbed.
Kylie Smith, told the New York Times she had known Mr. Loughner since elementary school.“It just seems so out of character for the Jared I grew up with,” Ms. Smith said.
At Mountain View High School in Tucson, friends remembered Mr. 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. He was 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 Michelle Martinez, a classmate.
But during his junior high year, things began to deteriorate, other acquaintances told the Wall Street Journal, he began using drugs and his grades fell apart. One friend, Zach Osler, said he would suddenly embark on odd discourses,“He didn’t make sense,” Mr. Osler said. Then he would shut up. “A lot of the time he was mute,” Mr. Osler told the paper.
In tenth grade everything started to fall apart. High school friend Alex Montanaro told the Wall Street Journal Mr. Loughner took a turn after a break-up with a girlfriend. He started hanging out with drug users, grew distant from his friends and“really became an outcast,” said Mr. Montanaro. Classmate Catie Parker described him as a “pot head” and by grade eleven his marks had dropped. He didn’t bother returning for grade twelve.
In 2007 he could have been graduating high school, but instead was arrested on drug charges. That year he also made his first contact with Ms. Giffords at a“Congress on your Corner” event and said after that he found her “stupid and unintelligent.”
In 2008, he tried to enlist in the Army but failed a a drug-screening test.
Mr. Loughner enrolled at Pima Community College where several classmates noticed his odd behaviour. Lynda Sorenson had an algebra course with Mr. Loughner last June and noticed something was off during the very first class.“We do have one student in the class who was disruptive today, I’m not certain yet if he was on drugs (as one person surmised) or disturbed,” wrote Ms. Sorenson in an email to a friend obtained by the Washington Post. “He scares me a bit.” In a later email, she wrote, “He is one of thosewhose picture you see on the news, after he has come into class with an automatic weapon. Everyone interviewed would say, Yeah, he was in my math class and he was really weird.”
Professor Ben McGahee told the New York Times that Mr. Loughner responded with an incorrect answer to a math question and asked him,“How can you deny math instead of accepting it?” Mr. McGahee said that Mr. Lougher continued with a pattern of disruptive and erratic behaviour including hysterical laughter and explosions of anger. “I was afraid he was going to pull out a weapon,” said Mr. McGahee.
Poetry student Don Coorough told CBS that Mr. Loughner read a poem about bland tasks such as showering, going to the gym and riding the bus in a wild style,“grabbing his crotch and jumping around the room.” Mr. Coorough told CBS, “He appeared to be to me an emotional cripple or an emotional child. He lacked compassion, he lacked understanding and he lacked an ability to connect.”
Steven Cates, who attended the advanced poetry writing class with Mr. Loughner, said he liked to talk about philosophy, logic and literature. He“didn’t have the social intelligence, but he definitely had the academic intelligence,” Mr. Cates told CBS.
Mr. Loughner dropped out of the college last October when he was asked to undergo a psychiatric evaluation.
National Post
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