Arizona Suspect’s Online Trail Offers

Arizona Suspect’s Online Trail Offers Hints of Alienation   

WASHINGTON — His MySpace page included a photograph of a United States history textbook, on top of which he had placed a handgun. He prepared a series of Internet videos in which he posted odd statements about the gold standard, the community college he attended and SWAT teams.
Jared Lee Loughner, in these few public hints, offered a sense of his alienation from society, confusion, anger as well as foreboding that his life could soon come to an end. Friends talked of how he had become reclusive in recent years, and his public postings raised questions, in retrospect at least, about his mental state.
Still, his comments offered little indication as to why, as police allege, he would go to a Safeway supermarket in northwest Tucson on Saturday morning and begin shooting at a popular Democratic congresswoman and more than a dozen others, killing six and wounding 19.
There was evidence of recent trouble, though. Mr. Loughner, 22, was suspended in late September from Pima Community College, where he had been attending classes, because the school became aware of a disturbing YouTube video. Mr. Loughner voluntarily withdrew from the College on Oct. 4.
Paul Schwalbach, a spokesman for the college, said that he did not know the content of the video or if it was considered threatening.
But the campus police and other officials viewed it and “found it very disturbing,” he said. “If he wanted to come back to the school, he would have needed a mental health clearance,” Mr. Schwalbach said.
Mr. Loughner grew up in Tucson, attended public schools and was an unremarkable student at Mountain View High School, said Ali Freedman, a classmate.
“He was just a normal, nice person,” Ms. Freedman said, adding that she had not been in contact with him since about 2007.
Sara Due, however, took advanced poetry writing with Mr. Loughner at Pima Community College in spring 2010 and said that “he creeped my classmates and I out.”
“He always had a smirk/weird smile on his face,” she said in a Facebook message. “I just remember the comments he used to make about poems other kids would write. Just seemed a little off.”
Another former high school classmate said that Mr. Loughner’s politics were left of center, and that he may have met Representative Giffords, who was shot in the head outside the Safeway supermarket, sometime before the attack.
“As I knew him he was left wing, quite liberal. & oddly obsessed with the 2012 prophecy,” the former classmate, Caitie Parker, wrote in a series of Twitter feeds Saturday. “I haven’t seen him since ’07 though. He became very reclusive.”
“He was a political radical & met Giffords once before in ’07, asked her a question & he told me she was ‘stupid & unintelligent,’ ” she wrote.
Neighbors of Mr. Loughner in Orangewood Estates, a middle-class subdivision of single-family homes north of Tucson, said he lived with his parents, Amy and Randy Loughner, and they did not believe he had siblings. Two neighbors said they saw the family come and go but knew little about them.
“They stick to themselves,” said a woman who lives across the street and who asked not to be named.
A series of short videos posted on the Internet, apparently by Mr. Loughner, consist of changing blocs of text that are largely rambling and incoherent. Many take the form of stating a premise and then a logical conclusion that would follow from it.
They speak of being a “conscience dreamer”; becoming a treasurer of a new currency; controlling “English grammar structure”; talked of brainwashing and suggested that he believed he had powers of mind control.
“In conclusion, my ambition — is for informing literate dreamers about a new currency; in a few days, you know I’m conscience dreaming!” he wrote in one video, which was uploaded to YouTube on Dec. 15.
Still, some strands of recognizable political thought are woven among the more incoherent writings. Another video, for example, says debts should only be paid in currency that is backed by gold and silver.
One of his videos also suggests that he may have applied to join the Army at a recruiting station in Phoenix. It says he received a miniature Bible before taking tests there, and that he did not write a belief on his application form, so a recruiter wrote “none.”
Army officials said Saturday night that he had tried to enlist but had been rejected for military service. Privacy rules prevented them from disclosing the reason.
His YouTube page also listed a series of favorite books. Some were novels about political dystopias — “Animal Farm” by George Orwell, “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley, “Fahrenheit 451” by Ray Bradbury, and “We the Living” by Ayn Rand.
Others were about falling into fantasy worlds — “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking-Glass” by Lewis Carroll; “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” by L. Frank Baum; “Peter Pan” by J. M. Barrie; and “Gulliver’s Travels” by Jonathan Swift.
Still others were a range of political tracts: “The Communist Manifesto” by Karl Marx, “Mein Kampf” by Adolph Hitler, “The Republic” and “Meno” by Plato.
One was a novel about a sane man who is sent to an insane asylum: “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” by Ken Kesey.
Mr. Loughner’s social networking pages suggest that he had grievances against Pima Community College, that he felt cheated in some way.
“If I’m not receiving the purchase from a payment then I’m a victim of fraud,” he wrote, referencing the school, in one of his many confusing phrases posted in videos that he appears to have made.
He also called the school “unconstitutional.” In one extended posting, he suggested that the government was trying to trick him, or take advantage of him, although he never explained exactly what caused these concerns.
In one video he prepared, which he called “My Final Thoughts: Jared Lee Loughner!” he appeared to be losing a clear sense of the division between the real world and a fantasy world he was constructing in his mind.
“All humans are in need of sleep. Jared Loughner is a human. Hence, Jared Loughner is in need of sleep.” He wrote, continuing, “If I define sleepwalking then sleepwalking is the act or state of walking, eating, or performing other motor acts while asleep, of which one is unaware upon awakening.”
He also briefly discusses how he defines terrorism, although he never explains why it is a topic he cares about.
“If I define terrorist then a terrorist is a person who employs terror or terrorism, especially as a political weapon. I define terrorist,” he wrote. “This, a terrorist is a person who employs terror or terrorism, especially as a political weapon. If you call me a terrorist then the argument to call me a terrorist is Ad hominem. You call me a terrorist.”
As recently as Saturday, he posted a message on his MySpace account hinting that he was going away.
“Goodbye,” he wrote at about 5 a.m. Saturday. “Dear friends . . . Please don’t be mad at me.”