A yearbook photo of Loughner. (
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Psycho shooter Jared Lee Loughner has been sitting in a lonely Arizona cell block with a “smirk on his face” and a “paranoid headlights stare” since Saturday’s rampage that left Rep. Gabrielle Giffords clinging to life and six others dead.
U.S. Marshal for Arizona David Gonzales, in an interview posted today on The Daily Beast, talked about Loughner’s “paranoid” behavior while in custody.
“I was with him Tuesday. He doesn’t say much, he just sits in his cell with a smirk on his face, nothing else,” Gonzales said.
He added that Loughner has also had a maniacal look on his face ever since he was arrested.
“Not a smile, just a smirk. When I saw him he was in the temporary cell, just before his arraignment. It’s a 6-by-6 holding cell,” said Gonzales. “He refuses to talk with deputy marshals, just ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ or ‘OK,’ just one-syllable answers. It’s almost like nobody is worthy of him speaking to anybody.”
COPS REVEAL PAST CONTACT WITH LOUGHNERS
The interview is the first of any kind to detail Loughner’s behavior since he was arrested and what he has been doing in jail.
Loughner’s mugshot, released on Tuesday after he was arraigned, shows him smirking at the camera. He also reportedly had a smirk on his face in his only court appearance.
Loughner has had “this sort of paranoid headlights stare” since the tragedy, said Gonzales.
“I was talking to a psychologist friend of mine and that seems like the right term for what I saw. He just sat there, elbows resting on his knees, staring straight ahead and smirking,” he added. “I saw him do that for about 15 minutes straight, just looking at the wall. After the arraignment he was taken back to the holding cell and transferred to an undisclosed location.”
Although Gonzales did not disclose where Loughner is being held, The Daily Beast reported that he has been transferred to the Federal Correctional Facility in Phoenix.
Gonzales said he has worked with Giffords in the past and was friends with Federal Judge John Roll.
“Very well, we’ve worked together on southwest border issues,” he said of Giffords. “She’s asked me and other law enforcement to appear at town hall meetings, she just recently starting calling it ‘Congress on Your Corner,’ she did these all the time, with ICE, DEA the Marshals. I did two or three last year with her on border issues, she’s been very, very involved in working to fix our border issues.”
The revelations come as authorities said Loughner was pulled over for running a red light and ran from his father after an angry confrontation just before the shooting spree.
Investigators are piecing together the timeline of Loughner’s frenzied morning before the attack.
“What he did and the morning before the shooting, we’re just trying to find all that out,” said sheriff’s Capt. Chris Nanos.
Nanos wouldn’t say what Loughner bought during two trips to Walmart.
After a shopping trip, Loughner ran a red light but was let off with a warning, the Arizona Game and Fish Department said.
The officer took Loughner’s driver’s license and vehicle registration information at 7:30 a.m. but found no outstanding warrants and didn’t search the car, a late 1960s dark gray Chevy Nova.
About 8 a.m., Randy Loughner saw his son walk to one of the family’s vehicles and take a black bag out of the trunk.
“The father went out and said, ‘What’s that?’ and he mumbled something and took off running,” said Sheriff Clarence Dupnik.
Randy Loughner got in his truck and chased his son, but Jared ran into the desert.
At 10:11 a.m., police say Jared Loughner showed up at a Tucson grocery store in a taxi and shot 19 people, killing a federal judge and a 9-year-old girl, among others and wounding more than a dozen.
Hours after the attack, sheriff’s deputies swarmed the Loughners’ home and removed what they describe as evidence Loughner was targeting Giffords. Among the handwritten notes was one with the words “Die, bitch,” which authorities believe was a reference to Giffords.
Investigators with the Pima County Sheriff’s Department previously said they found handwritten notes in Loughner’s safe reading “I planned ahead,” ”My assassination” and “Giffords.”
President Obama visits Arizona tonight and will honor the victims in a speech to a rattled state and nation.
In one apparent reaction to the shooting, the FBI said background checks for handgun sales jumped in Arizona following the shootings, though the agency cautioned that the number of checks doesn’t equate to the number of handguns sold.
Still, there were 263 background checks in Arizona on Monday, up from 164 for the same day a year ago — a 60 percent rise. Nationally, the increase was more modest: from 7,522 last year to 7,906 Monday, a 5 percent jump.
Loughner’s parents, silent and holed up in their home since attack, issued a statement Tuesday, expressing remorse over the shooting.
“There are no words that can possibly express how we feel,” Randy and Amy Loughner wrote in a statement handed to reporters waiting outside their house. “We wish that there were, so we could make you feel better. We don’t understand why this happened.
“We care very deeply about the victims and their families. We are so very sorry for their loss.”
Giffords is breathing on her own and responding non-verbally to doctors after being shot in the head.
“We have really decreased the amount of sedation we are giving her and as a result of that, she’s becoming more and more spontaneous all the time,” said Dr. Peter Rhee, trauma chief at the University of Arizona.
Meanwhile, all federal judges in Arizona have recused themselves from the case against Loughner.
An order issued this afternoon by US District Judge Roslyn Silver says the impartiality of the Arizona judges could be questioned because Roll was killed during the rampage. A California judge was assigned to the case.
Roll was the chief federal judge for Arizona.
With AP