Jared Loughner's behavior recorded by college classmate in e-mails

[sabrina 1]

Source: Washington Post

By David A. Fahrenthold

In early June, Lynda Sorenson, 52, had gone back to community college in Tucson in hopes of getting back on the job market. One of her classes was a basic algebra class--and one of her classmates was Jared Loughner, now identified by authorities as the man who killed six people and critically wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) in a shooting rampage Saturday. Sorenson's e-mails to friends from last summer, provided to the Washington Post, reveal her growing alarm at Loughner's strange and disruptive
behavior in class.

.......

From June 10:
"As for me, Thursday means the end to week two of algebra class. It seems to be going by quickly, but then I do have three weeks to go so we'll see how I feel by then. Class isn't dull as we have a seriously disturbed student in the class, and they are trying to figure out how to get rid of him before he does something bad, but on the other hand, until he does something bad, you can't do anything about him. Needless to say, I sit by
the door."



From June 14:
"We have a mentally unstable person in the class that scares the living crap out of me. He is one of those whose picture you see on the news, after he has come into class with an automatic weapon. Everyone interviewed would say, Yeah, he was in my math class and he was really weird. I sit by the door with my purse handy. If you see it on the news one night, know that I got out fast..."

Read more: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2011/01/jared-loughners-behavior-recor.html?wpisrc=nl_natlalert

[LuckyLib]

1. Years ago, I was stalked by a crazy in my apartment building. And the response of the police was

exactly this: "they are trying to figure out how to get rid of him before he does something bad, but on the other hand, until he does something bad, you can't do anything about him." Bingo. the crime needed to have happened for them to act. Seriously disturbed mentally ill people have to violate a law and someone has to witness it. Their families can want to get them help, but our system is woefully inadequate for helping them to do so. Everyone suffers. Some die.

[sabrina 1]

4. And even when both the family and the mentally ill person

are willing to get help, there is little help available. We have experienced that in my family. There is nowhere for them to go and the most you can hope for is a six week stay in the hospital and then they are back on their own. Family's often cannot deal with the problems, and are often afraid of them.

This country could afford the best care in the world for the mentally ill. But jail is where most of them end up now. As one woman who is a mental healthe worker we spoke to told us, many of the people in jail in this country, should be called 'patients' not criminals, and that if they had had treatment, many would have never committed the crimes they ended up committing.

[midnight]

11. Correct....

[SayitAintSo]

12. Thanks St. Reagan for that ....

He stripped the funding of social pgms that support how we deal with the mentally ill. Now instead of placing them in needed mental institutions we let them roam the streets and buy guns...

[Bragi]

17. To be clear...

What you describe is inherently a health care problem, not a law enforcement problem.

[SoapBox]

2. Yikes...and creepy.

And this speaks volumes (again!) about how we fail to deal
in America with the mentally unstable.

Get some free mental help? RushThugs? T.HaterBaggers?

Oh ya...I know your answer...HELL NO.

Well...you reap what you sow.

[barbtries]

3. and he bought the weapon legally

and in AZ was allowed to keep it hidden. sigh. :cry:

[IamK]

8. why not open up medical records for gun purchases... ??????

[barbtries]

15. this guy

had some kind of police record. you'd think that would show up. apparently guns are for everyone in AZ. or the usa for that matter.

[Lurks Often]

18. That was a pretty uninformed remark

apparently you haven't bothered to even find out what his criminal record was. He was arrested for misdemeanor possession of drugs and that charge was dropped after he paid a fine and took a court ordered program for drug offenders. That is the extend of his criminal record.

[Lurks Often]

19. He apparently never saw a mental health professional

so even if mental health records were part of the background check*, nothing would have come up.

And shortly after the Virginia Tech shooting, discussions regarding the reporting of a person's mental health status came up and the mental health profession strongly protested against expanding the existing Federal law as discriminatory to the vast majority of their patients.


*I forget the exact language, but essentially if a person is involuntarily committed, he loses the right to buy a gun.

[1776Forever]

5. If you didn't hear Sheriff Dupnik today he said "In the 1960's when I was on the beat they would

have put this guy away where he could get help. It is different today". Says it all!

[sabrina 1]

7. There is no help for mentally ill people since Reagan

era when they closed all the mental hospitals. That was the response to the fact that those hospitals were abusing people. Rather than correct the problems, they solved it by shutting them down with nothing to replace them. Except jail. U.S. prisons are filled with people who belong in hospitals. Another legacy of the Reagan administration.

[KoKo]

9. Actually it was Carter (sad to say) who turned Mentally Ill out of State Hospitals onto the Street.

I wish I didn't have to tag Carter with this...but my Aunt was turned out at that time. It was terrible for the family.

I never understood why Carter did that.. Especially since his wife was such an advocate for attention for Mentally Ill people. But I think, perhaps, they felt it was better for them to get out of the State Mental Hospitals where they were being ignored or maltreated and to try to get them back into society. There were new Medications for many of them that, it was thought, would allow them all to go back into society if they could be in Group Homes.

True to his promise Carter set the foundations for the Mentally Ill to transition into Group Homes...but it took some years to get it all together...and for many of the very ill...meds didn't work and they ended up leaving Group Homes and onto the Streets...because they didn't follow the meds or the meds didn't work for some...or the health insurance or relatives couldn't afford the cost.

At any rate lots of Mentally Ill were tossed out of Hospitals and put out onto the streets until the Group Homes were available.

It was a mess. I don't know if the Privatization of Health Care for Mentally Ill in Group Homes was a Good Idea or Misguided. At the time to Carter and folks working with Mentally Ill at the time...it seemed a VERY GOOD THING to get them out of those State Hospitals (which some claimed were prisons where sexual and other abuses were perpetrated on them).

I don't really know ...but, what I do know, is that the mentally ill in this country are very mistreated, underdiagnosed when they are in serious ill health and that more research needs to be done as to who is classified as "life time Mentally Ill..as opposed to those who are more treatable with therapy, changed life conditions with some minor course of medication to get them through some "rough patches."

Just saying.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

10. My mother was working in a mental hospital when Reagan turned mentally ill people out...

Carter signed the Mental Health Systems Act of 1980, but it was rescinded by Reagan. The act would have given a substantial increase in funding to community mental health centers. Unfortunately , it was rescinded before it was implemented. My mother was ordered to make recommendations as to who was fit to leave the hospital in which she worked. She did her best to keep those who most needed care in the hospital.

[defendandprotect]

28. Exactly .... Reagan ensured mentally ill could still be explolited rather than

being helped in half way houses to independence --

[sabrina 1]

13. I don't think Carter turned people out in the street. Airc from

what I've read, there were serious problems with the whole mental health system back then. People being committed against their will, abuses in mental institutions, people being drugged and kept without proper facilities, like ordinary cleanliness facilities eg.

Didn't Geraldo Rivera 'expose' the crimes being committed in Mental Institutions on TV? Carter I think, was trying to improve conditions in what was a horrible system. But it was Reagan who reacted to the exposure of abuses with shutting them all down and tossing everyone into the street.

I wonder now if that wasn't a way to populate their privatized prison industry later on. Nothing would surprise me anymore, these people are so intrinsically evil, I am sad to say.

[Doremus]

20. No. It was Reagan.

http://www.sociology.org/content/vol003.004/thomas.html

[cali]

31. the mental health system is deeply flawed but it was even worse

then.

[Octafish]

21. +1

In Michigan, then-Gov John Engler (R-Sphincter), defunded and closed many, eventually all, state-run mental health facilities. Many, many people were, literally, thrown into the street. Those who need psychiatric help now must have great health insurance. Otherwise, they were left to wander about until they break the law and end up in jail.

Thus is conservatism. Sphincter now heads the National Association of Manufacturers, proponents of offshore labor.

[sabrina 1]

26. Thanks for the link. I wonder when the public will have had enough

of 'conservative values'? I blame Democrats to some extent because they do not tell the story of what 'conservatism' has done to this country in a meaningful way.

[defendandprotect]

27. And, it's purposefully different, because there always has to be an underclass... someone to ,,,

be frightened of --

When the "asylums" were attacked as inhumane and mental illness was recognized

as a brain chemical problem, those who were exploiting the mentally ill -- and who

had been exploiting them for a century or so saw an avenue of profit for them being

closed down. Exploitation pays, whether it is of nature or of other humans.

The end of the institutions was supposed to bring a new kinder, compassionate care

for the mentally ill, with half-way houses intended to bring future independence.

That would have mainly ended the exploitation of the mentally ill -- and that couldn't

be allowed to happen. First they became homeless and then, like the homeless, they

often became prisoners.

[WestSeattle2]

6. We are still paying the price of a Reagan presidency -

decades later the price remains steep.

http://www.sociology.org/content/vol003.004/thomas.html

[mrarundale]

14. Jared "Loughner" (Loner)??? c'mon people

Beware of lone people who mistrust the government. Just like the amazingly prolific quick sharp shooter at VTech...and scarcely a mention of the dead federal judge? If anyone was a target it was him, well, because he HAD been a target. That is where the story is, if there is one at all.

[Imajika]

22. Your just making stuff up...

You have no idea what your talking about.

The target was not the federal judge, it was the Congresswoman.

The shooter seems to have had some obsession with Giffords.

[defendandprotect]

29. misplaced

[sabrina 1]

24. He didn't know the judge was going to be there. He was after

Rep. Giffords, according to law enforcement and had planned to assassinate her for quite a while. The judge had just received a call that morning telling him she was going to be meeting with constituents and he wanted to talk to her about something so he decided to go.

[underpants]

16. So we learned nothing from the Va. Tech tragedy?

EVERYONE seemed to think this guy was a loose cannon. Pima CC did kick him off campus so there is that.

The whole thing is just so sad.

[newspeak]

23. was listening to the Today Show

Okay, he definitely has mental health issues! They showed a picture of an alter in the backyard with a fake human skull and candles. He had enough mind to plan this shooting, however. Not a spur of the moment thing, and it seems he did target the congresswoman.

When they interviewed the little girls father, I cried. It seems she had such a beautiful soul--a bright soul that will be missed. :cry:

[kudzu22]

25. And she was born on 9/11/01. Tragic.

[Lorien]

30. I notice that the WP article has a photo that shows Loughner with a short conservative haircut

every other MSM outlet shows the old black and white "long haired hippie" photo. It's easy to see how most of them are trying to spin it.