The night before Jared Lee Loughner shot and killed six people at a political event for Gabrielle Giffords, the gunman’s father hid two weapons but forgot to disable Loughner’s car.
That revelation is among 2,700 pages of documents released by the Pima County Sheriff’s Office today, two years after the shooting rampage outside the Tucson, Ariz., supermarket.
The Arizona Republic newspaper and other media outlets had campaigned to see the documents after a judge ordered them sealed to ensure Loughner a fair trial.
Loughner shot and killed six people and injured 13 others, including Giffords, who miraculously survived a gunshot wound to the head. He’s serving life in prison for the January 2011 killings.
Randy Loughner told police after the shooting that his son had started acting erratically, so much that he began disabling his car to keep him home, the Republic reported.
“(Randy) stated that (Jared) had become more and more distant from them and he would not communicate with Mr. Loughner about much of anything,” the reports say, according to the Republic.
“He had become increasingly concerned for Jared and began to disable Jared’s Nova that was parked out front to prevent Jared from being able to drive anywhere at night.”
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Among the other details to emerge is that those who survived the rampage shouted to kill Loughner after the struggle to disarm him ended.
It also became known that Pima Community College had expelled Loughner, now 24, for recording a disturbing video and posting it online, the Republic said.
College officials warned Randy of his son’s conduct and suggested he remove any weapons from the home, which his father did.
His parents reported extreme behavior and an increasingly cold relationship with their son, CBS News said.
They tested him for drug use and believed he was high on crystal meth.
“Sometimes you’d hear him in his room, like, having conversations,” his mother, Amy Loughner, told police. “And sometimes he would look like he was having a conversation with someone right there, be talking to someone. I don’t know how to explain it.”
A childhood friend called Loughner’s home “hostile,” the Los Angeles Times said.
“His dad’s an alcoholic. And his mom. They both drank heavily. He told me at one point … during his childhood, he thought he’d been beat by his parents or abused,” Zach Osler said after the shooting, the LA Times reported.
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