Posted on 01/10/2011 6:51:58 PM PST by kristinn
Reporting from Tucson — The parents of Jared Lee Loughner, accused of shooting Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and 19 other people, were huddled in seclusion in their Tucson home Monday night, his father crying and his mother so shaken she could not get out of bed, a neighbor told The Times.
As the sun was beginning to set Monday, Randy Loughner called his neighbor, retired gasoline truck driver Wayne Smith, 70, to ask him to get their mail. Smith, who is not particularly close to the Loughners, grabbed the mail and was invited inside.
"They're in there now," Smith said in a subsequent interview with The Times. "They're both in there crying. He's crying and hanging on to me and she's not even out of bed."
Smith described the Loughners as very private and said they knew few people on their street, although they had lived in the neighborhood since before Jared, 22, was born. He said Jared was their only child. Smith said Loughner's mother, Amy, had a good job with good retirement and pay, and Randy was a stay-at-home dad who liked to work on cars.
"He worshipped the boy," Smith said.
SNIP
All three wept together outside on Saturday. "We stood right out there and cried for an hour. I'm a softie," Smith said. "A man needs compassion. He's broken up about his son, but also about all those people who died."
Smith said the family is intensely private. "The best way I can describe it, they're like a mountain man," he said. "They want to be alone."
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Their psycho son is an only child and he is 22 years old. Why would this family need a "stay-at-home dad"? This tells me they knew they had plenty to be concerned about.
Parents are f***tards....
They could have sought intervention while he was still in High School. When he almost died from alcohol poisoning in a classroom, they could have sought help from the counselors and medical doctors.
There has been numerous warning signs with this individual and I think the Sheriff was fully aware of him too. He attended two diversion programs after as many arrests.
Plus, there are numerous private programs that would have gladly taken him in....funded by private donations or the United Way.
They knew and the Sheriff knew this person was ill and needed serious intervention. Sounds like neither of these parties did the right thing for Jared or the victims.
Your tag line says it all.....
First, they may have never known their son was expelled. Colleges do not send home report cards or other information on ADULTS. The kid was an adult, legally.
Second, if their son was not causing an imminent danger to himself, a imminent danger to others or was grossly unable to care for himself (picture walking naked in snowstorm) he would have been untouchable under most leftist mental health laws. If he had medications prescribed and was not taking them, they could take him to the ER or to the police. But no one can make a mentally ill person take meds except in certain circumstances.
Go ahead. Do some real honest research about what it takes for a parent to get a mentally ill teenager - much less and adult child over 18- hospitalized or even outpatient treated without their cooperation, without them actually having harmed anyone or threatening to harm themselves. Go ahead. Figure out how to FORCE a teenager or young adult who does not think he is sick, to take psych meds.
Walk in those shoes.
Then come back and tell us about how the entire psychiatric system, healthcare, justice, social work and legal systems are stacked against you. And tell me how social you want to be with the neighbors while for 10 years, you live in a hopeless hell on earth while your only child disappears leaving a crazed shell of a human in his place.
Couldn't have said it better myself, I know someone going through this and it's been horrendous.
Another thing to bear in mind is that when someone is 18 y/o they are an adult and free to accept or reject help offered to them. It’s their “human right”- the state’s term, not mine.
We begged for a guardianship for my nephew but were told that the courts are loathe to do that as it totally strips the patient of his rights to self determination and the cost is prohibitive.
Everytime we proposed a solution, the “experts” shot us down.
It’s not always the family’s fault.
My brother was a liar of unequaled gall.
For a long time he had my mother believing that he was the equal to 007.
Example. He had been taught in the service, remember he was in a highly secret unit (another lie), to fly any kind of aircraft or helicopter so that in the event he had to get back on our side of the Russian border he could steal whatever aircraft was available.
007 movie stuff.
As I had 10,000 hours mostly multi-engine, it totally blew me away that anyone could believe that bull.
He was probably 50 years old when he told that one.
Helicopters are really tricky machines and he could steal one with all of the instrumentation in Russian? Give me a break. He could not fly the most basic single engine trainer.
But all Mother knew about airplanes is that I could fly one and that we always got home in one piece.
Some of these people can lie their way out of anything as long as they only have to convince their family.
So as I said, unless you put your feet under that table, you have no idea. Even your situation was not the same even though it was a difficult one.
But, if a family is without resources, if the young man is without a job or health insurance, or if the young man is beyond listening to the advice of his family, there will probably be no treatment and a violent outcome is a reasonably predictable outcome. Most of the public "treatment" of schizophrenia takes the form of serial incarcerations courtesy of our criminal justice system.
And, when their sentences are up, they're tossed back out onto the sidewalk to figure things out for themselves. Unfortunately, figuring things out is not their strong suit.
“But none of us know what he was telling his parents.”
Absolutely agree. What is being reported is conjecture based mostly on hearsay at this time.
People also need to realize that even IF there had been contact with a psychiatrist at some point, that many people like this are very capable of seeming stunningly normal for brief periods of time.
I’ve seen it. A person who is having auditory hallucinations, and is generally spending the majority of daily life in a complete fantasy land; suddenly able to lucidly claim that they are simply being manipulated by family members...and the mental health professionals will sometimes believe them.
His parents knew, too. How difficult could it possibly be, to release a simple statement of sympathy for those shot and killed, and to state that they'd tried to help their son and were sorry for the pain and suffering that he had caused? Not difficult at all. That's not been done, though. An odd lack of empathy, that.
I've seen and read enough to understand that this person has more of an exposure to so-called "lucid dreaming" than a basic course at the local community college would provide. He was not socially adept, in fact was an oddball loner at best. He gained that exposure somewhere. Now we see that there's a structure serving as an apparent "shrine" in their backyard. It's a reasonable suspicion that his parents played some role in his knowledge on certain subjects.
I've seen that Jared Loughner has claimed to have been employed by Child Protective Services of all places, for goodness sake. How could such a disordered personality ever have gotten such a position? Strings were pulled, it would seem. Lo and behold, look who's an administrator with the county. His mother. The county sheriff is strangely circumspect, too. More strings were pulled? It's a reasonable suspicion.
I so not feel for them = I do not feel for them
(just saw that)
Yea, I’m sure much more will come out about this kid. With the way info comes out nowadays, the next few days should be an onslaught of accurate and good info.
Seems a lot of dying is taking place lately. That’s not good.
On target.
(Can we still say “target” — better check with the FCC)
I have wondered that. My God, he posted on his myspace that he wanted to kill himself and another time a police officer. No friends on his myspace cared enough to say something?
From my recollection the movement to ‘free’ the insane started in the 70’s (early). Gerald Riveria did a documentary on an asylum (the name slips my mind) in NY and how those patients were being treated. It was pretty graphic and it was horrendous (again from my own recollection). The filth, the neglect etc etc was on display and understandably, the outcry was loud. After that, it was only a matter of time and laws started being changed and of course, instead of ‘improving’ the system, it was abolished and now we have the insane walking the streets and unless they have a desire to get help, there’s little anyone can do.
Wait! I'm confused. Who did the shooting? His parents? I thought he did.
Don't ya just love journalists today. Can't write their way out of a wet paper bag.
In Arizona you can petition to have them on psych hold for either 48 or 72 hours. A lawyer I worked for did that to a son of an “incapacitated person” (probate) that was ticked off at the lawyer. He had him forcibly committed for two days.
Jared Loughner exhibited signs of a mental disorder while he was still a minor and attended public school. He abused drugs and alcohol. The School had to take him to the emergency room where he almost died from alcohol poisoning (he inhaled a fifth of tequila at the school).
And, this problem will become worse as more kids with mental handicaps isolate themselves from others through video games and other personal electronic devices. This isolation takes these kids away from the social interaction that is necessary to find out who they are and how they relate to other human beings.
The Twittering and such electronic interaction is a false means of social interaction. It causes a blindness to other human beings and should never be used as a substitute for real human interaction. Like I said above, we are moving into an electronic age which exasperated social development in our kids. It camouflages people from revealing who they really are and how they relate to other human beings. It also encourages people to detach themselves from others and such isolation is against the social nature of the human being. This does not look good for those suffering from a mental illness. Their detachment also hides their problem from those around them. And if their problem is not corrected, can cause big problems.
I could go on about this, but I would like to see others give their thoughts on the matter.
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