The weight of the world is on their shoulders — and it shows in the dour faces of Jared Lee Loughner’s parents, who yesterday appeared in public together for the first time since their only child killed six people and shot 13 others in the Arizona massacre.
Randy and Amy Loughner, their faces frozen into masks of grief and strain, wordlessly left their Tucson home, both wearing dark sunglasses, and got into a car with two men, one of whom drove them away.
Soon afterward, they arrived at a downtown Tucson federal building that houses the offices of the federal defender, whose lawyers are representing their crazed son against pending criminal charges that could get him the death penalty.
The couple refused to talk to reporters when they left the office building a short time later and returned to their home after getting a pizza.
Neighbors were surprised to see the Loughners emerge from the house, which had been so quiet recently that they had assumed the parents had sought refuge somewhere else.
One neighbor, George Gayan, 82, said he imagined that the family was distraught and “justifiably so.”
“You don’t know what they’re going through, but you can guess,” Gayan said. Meanwhile yesterday, a motel clerk revealed even more disturbing information about Loughner’s weird behavior in the hours leading up to the Jan. 8 shooting.
When Loughner checked into the Motel 6 in Tucson early that morning, he began writing his name in the guest registry, but twice started and stopped writing his last name after putting down its first letter, “L,” said the clerk, who requested anonymity.
So Loughner then just wrote his first name twice — “Jared Jared” — said the clerk.
“I said, ‘What are you doing? How do you spell your last name?’ ” she recalled. Loughner then spelled his last name to her, and she wrote it in the registry.
Additional reporting by Brigitte Stelzer