#jared loughner

Mass Murderer: Jared Loughner

On 8th January 2011, 22 year old Jared Lee Lougner turned up to a Safeway supermarket in Tucson, Arizona to attend a public gathering hosted by Democratic US Representative Gabby Giffords. However, instead of attending as a supportive member of the public, Loughner harboured a much more sinister motive. When he was just 10 feet away from Giffords, he drew out a pistol and shot her in the head before turning his weapon on a crowd of innocent bystanders.

Gabby suffered severe trauma to the brain, but miraculously she survived. Sadly, 6 people lost their lives that day: Christina-Taylor Green (9), Dorothy "Dot" Morris (76), John Roll (63), Phyllis Schneck (79), Dorwan Stoddard (76) and Gabriel "Gabe" Zimmerman (30). In total, 21 people were shot before Loughner was tackled to the ground while reloading his gun. 

Afterwards, a former friend of Loughner confided that the shooter had developed a vendetta against Giffords since 2007. It was during this year that Loughner had been presented with the opportunity to speak with Giffords directly, and he had cryptically asked her: “What is government if words have no meaning?” Apparently, she had insufficiently answered his question, which angered him and instigated plans for the assassination attempt.

Bizarrely, just one year prior to the shooting, Lougner’s college classmate made a note about him in her personal journal, which in hindsight now resembles an eerie premonition of the events to come. She wrote:

“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. He scares me a bit. The teacher tried to throw him out and he refused to go, so I talked to the teacher afterward. Hopefully he will be out of class very soon, and not come back with an automatic weapon... He is one of those whose picture you see on the news, after he has come into class with an automatic weapon.”

In 2011, Loughner was formally diagnosed with schizophrenia and a psychologist testified that he had suffered from depression since his mid-teens, and in 2012 he was sentenced to serve seven consecutive life terms, plus 140 years in prison without any possibility of parole.

(originally published in the January 11, 2011 Portland Press Herald) The horrific event that transpired in Tucson on Saturday has inspired more than ample discussion regarding the tone and spirit of our nation’s political discourse. Despite all the fervent commentary, there is one piece of this puzzle that remains largely glossed over, however. And this is where it gets a bit personal. When I was…

“Gabby’s mom, Gloria, came up with the idea for our wedding invitation. In Mexico, Spain, Germany, and Italy, when something wonderful or miraculous happens, there’s a tradition that a small painting, a “retablo,” is created describing it. People hang it in their church, giving thanks. In Mexico, one popular and humorous version of such a painting features a dashing young man, a sombrero in one hand and flowers in the other, courting a lovely woman in a courtyard. She sits on a bench with a shawl on her shoulders, her head turned toward the man. The image of a saint is in a nearby tree, looking over them. But the painting also contains some tension. Around the corner is a man with a gun in his hand, undoubtedly the young woman’s father, ready to chase the male suitor away.

Gabby and Gloria thought it would be amusing if they used this painting on the top flap of the invitation. With Photoshop, they removed the father’s hair so he’d look more like Gabby’s balding dad, Spencer. And the woman in the courtyard, originally a brunette, was turned into a blonde so she’d look more like Gabby. (I nixed Gloria’s idea of putting a NASA patch on the man’s jacket. NASA is careful about the use of it’s logos and designs. I’d become sensitive about the minutiae that could earn an astronaut a trip to the front office.)

At the time, not all of our guests knew what to make of this image. They just figured, correctly, that it was Gabby and her artistic mother doing something creative that reflected “borderland” culture. Looking at that invitation in retrospect, of course yields a different impression, as if it foreshadowed what was to come. The painting now feels stark and troubling. A man and a woman have fallen in love, that’s obvious, but their relationship is being threatened by a hairless, sinister-looking man holding a gun.“