Whatever his motive, Jared Loughner was, by all accounts, an antisocial character whom most found odd and off-putting. Wearing a hoodie even in the scorching Tucson summer, and sealing the world out with his iPod earbuds, Jared would walk the family dog around the neighborhood, oblivious to those who tried to greet him.
“I’ve said ‘hi’ multiple times, but he’s ignored me and continued with whatever he’s doing,” says Anthony Woods, a 19-year-old airplane mechanic who’s lived next door to the Loughners for seven years. “He seems very depressed, he was hunched over at all times.” (By contrast, neighbors say Jared’s mother is very friendly and outgoing, although his father, Woods says, is “very aggressive, very angry all the time about petty things—like if the trash is out because the trash guys didn’t pick it up, he yells at us for it.” The Loughners couldn’t be reached for comment). In recent weeks, Jared seemed to grow even more antisocial. “I’d try to engage him in a conversation and he’d run or walk away” says Jason Johnson, 33, who lives across the street and met Jared for the first time a few weeks ago. “I saw him two days ago and I said o. He turned and walked back into the house. He had a look in his eyes like something wasn’t right,” Johnson says. “You know how it is when you talk to someone who’s mentally ill and they’re just not there? It was like he was in his own world.”
Loughner’s world was indeed a strange and unsettling place.
“He was very disconnected from reality and from our class,” says Lydian Ali, a classmate of his in a poetry writing class at Pima Community College. “I remember him being incoherent when he contributed to class discussions. He would make a comment about someone's poem and none of us would know what he was talking about.” Another student, Amy Jensen, wrote on her website Saturday that she dropped out of a class at Pima in part because of Loughner’s bizarre behavior.
“He was creepy. He would laugh to himself nearly all the time, even about things that weren’t funny,” Jensen wrote. “I sat behind him in that class and dropped it partially because of him. He was the kind of guy I pictured bringing a gun to class and shooting everyone.” Pima Community College suspended Loughner in September after administrators grew disturbed over one of his Internet posts, and told his parents he would need a mental health clearance if he wanted to return. Instead, Loughner dropped out the following month.