Parents of Jared Loughner Say They 'Don't Understand' What Prompted Rampage

ABC News ^ | Tuesday, January 11, 2011 | Devin Dwyer, Tonya Kerr, Josey Crews, and Emily Friedman

[kristinn]

The devastated parents of accused Tucson shooter Jared Loughner released a statement today saying they "don't understand" what prompted their son to allegedly go on a "heinous" shooting rampage that killed six and injured 14 others, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

It was the first word from Loughner's family since the carnage on Saturday.

"This is a very difficult time for us. We ask the media to respect our privacy. There are no words that can possibly express how we feel. We wish that there were so we could make you feel better. We don't understand why this happened. It may not make any difference, but we wish that we could change the heinous events of Saturday. We care very deeply about the victims and their families. We are so very sorry for their loss."

The message was signed, "The Loughner Family," and was handed out by two members of the public defenders' office.

SNIP

While this is the first statement from Loughner's family, others who knew the 22-year-old before the attack have spoken out. One one former close friend of Loughner's said he went from a stable high school student to a violent, self-medicated "monster" after his girlfriend dumped him during his junior year of high school.

Zachary Osler said that Loughner, who would walk around with his jaw and fist clenched, spent "excessive amounts of money" on drugs.

Osler said Loughner consumed marijuana, cocaine, psilocybin mushrooms and the hallucigenic salvia.

"There was no political motive in this, [Jared] was just angry at the world," he said.

SNIP

[livius]

Make drugs legal and we will see a lot more Jared Loughners

I agree. Of course, they don't enforce the anti-drug laws now, so we're already seeing them. Remember, it's all a "lifestyle choice" nowadays. But drugs are seriously dangerous.

The reason alcohol is accepted is that in general, moderate use doesn't harm people and is actually even nutritionally beneficial. But there is nothing beneficial about drugs.

The same friend of mine who was verging on psychosis from her dope smoking could also barely walk up a flight of stairs...at the age of 16...without wheezing and coughing because she smoked so much. Pot smoke is apparently much higher in tar (that would be hashish) and more damaging than cigarette smoke, but that doesn't matter to the average leftist druggie, no matter how much he hates tobacco smoking.

[livius]

I suppose it’s probably not only liberals, although they’d be more likely to overlook weird behavior. But it’s true, parents want to protect their kids and will overlook just about anything.

[livius]

Since teens are often troubled just by the nature of being a teenager parents hope the problems will go away.

I'm sure that was the case. None of my kids is psychotic, thank God, but I wonder what I would have done if I started noticing weird things. In retrospect, I think I would have sought out somebody somewhere to discuss this with and find out my options.

Or maybe not. It's very hard to know what any of us might have done in a situation like this. I worked with the mentally ill so I would probably have recognized the problem earlier, but other people might not.

[livius]

I don’t know. Possibly because they felt the University of Virginia shooter couldn’t have been of any use to them politically.