TUCSON, Ariz. — Moments after the swirl of panic, blood, death and shock, the suspect was face down on the pavement and squirming under the hold of two civilians, his shaved head obscured by a beanie and the hood of his dark sweatshirt.
Deputy Sheriff Thomas Audetat, a chiseled former Marine with three tours in Iraq to his credit, dug his knee into the gangly young man’s back and cuffed him. With the aid of another deputy, he relieved the heroic civilians of their charge and began searching for weapons other than the Glock semi-automatic pistol, secured nearby under a civilian’s foot, that had just fired 31 rounds.
In the left front pocket, two 15-round magazines. In the right front pocket, a black, 4-inch folding knife. “Are there any other weapons on you?” Audetat recalled demanding.
“Back right pocket.”
But the back right pocket contained no weapons. Instead, in a Ziploc bag, the deputy found about $20 in cash, some change, a credit card and, peeking through the plastic as if proffering a calling card, an Arizona driver’s license for one Jared Lee Loughner, 22.
Audetat lifted the passive, even relaxed suspect to his feet and led him to the patrol car, where the man twisted himself awkwardly across the back seat, face planted on the floor board. Then he invoked an oddly timed constitutional right. “I plead the Fifth,” Loughner said, though the deputy had no intention of questioning him. “I plead the Fifth.”
At a Pima County Sheriff’s Department substation, Audetat guided Loughner to a tiny interview room with a two-way mirror, directed him to a plastic blue chair and offered him a glass of water. The deputy detected no remorse; nothing.
Now to another building for the mug shot. Look into the camera, the suspect was told. He smiled.
Click.
And is his slightly blackened left eye all but winking at the wholesale violence that preceded the camera’s click? The attack on a meet-and-greet event with a congresswoman outside a supermarket; the killing of six people, including the chief federal judge in Arizona and a 9-year-old girl; the wounding of 13, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, shot in the head.
Since last Saturday’s shooting frenzy in Tucson, investigators and the news media have spent the week frantically trying to assemble the Jared Loughner jigsaw puzzle in hopes that the pieces will fit, a clear picture will emerge and the answer to why will be found, providing the faint reassurance of a dark mystery solved.
Instead, the pattern of facts so far presents only a lack of one, a curlicue of contradictory moments open to broad interpretation. Here he is, a talented saxophonist with a prestigious high school jazz band, and there he is, a high school dropout. Here he is, a clean-cut employee for an Eddie Bauer store, and there he is, so unsettling a presence that tellers at a local bank would feel for the alarm button when he walked in.
Those who see premeditation in the acts Loughner is accused of committing can cite, for example, his pleading of the Fifth Amendment or the envelope the authorities found in his safe that bore the handwritten words “Giffords,” “My assassination” and “I planned ahead” — or how he bided his time in the supermarket, even using the men’s room. Those who suspect he is insane, and therefore a step removed from being responsible for his actions, can point to any of his online postings, including:
“If 987,123,478,961,876,341,234,671,234,098,601,978,618 is the year in B.C.E then the previous year of 987,123,478,961,876,341,234,671,234,098,601,978,618 B.C.E is 987,123,478,961,876,341,234,671,234,098,601,978,619 B.C.E.”
What the cacophony of facts do suggest is that Loughner is struggling with a profound mental illness (most likely paranoid schizophrenia, many psychiatrists say); that his recent years have been marked by stinging rejection — from his country’s military, his community college, his girlfriends and, perhaps, his father; that he, in turn, rejected American society, including its government, its currency, its language, even its math. Loughner once declared to his professor that the number 6 could be called 18.
As he alienated himself from his small clutch of friends, grew contemptuous of women in positions of power and became increasingly oblivious to basic social mores, Loughner seemed to develop a dreamy alternate world, where the sky was sometimes orange, the grass sometimes blue and the Internet’s informational chaos provided refuge.
He became an echo chamber for stray ideas, amplifying, for example, certain grandiose tenets of extremist right-wing groups — including the need for a new money system and the government’s mind-manipulation of the masses through language.
In the last three months, Loughner had a 9-millimeter bullet tattooed on his right shoulder blade and turned increasingly to the Internet to post indecipherable tutorials about the new currency, bemoan the prevalence of illiteracy and settle scores with the Army and Pima Community College, both of which had shunned him. He also may have felt rejected by the American government in general, and by Giffords in particular, with whom he had a brief — and, to him, unsatisfactory — encounter in 2007.
Nearly four years later, investigators say, Loughner methodically planned another encounter with her. Eight days ago, on a sunny Saturday morning, he took a $14 taxi ride to a meet-your-representative gathering outside a Safeway, they say, and he was armed for slaughter.
