In shackles and a jail jumpsuit, surrounded by tight security, he said little, adding to the mystery over a young man friends and co-workers described as increasingly disturbed and unstable.
It remains unclear whether Loughner's alleged actions were politically motivated, stemmed from mental illness or both. But the nice, skinny kid some classmates remember from Tucson's Mountain View High School appears to have transformed into an oddball with psychological problems.
Rants in Loughner's name on MySpace and YouTube suggest his alleged attack on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, a Democrat, was a politically motivated rebellion, but former friends, co-workers and mental health specialists suggest a personality gone awry, a social outcast whose instability seems to have fallen through the cracks despite the fears of bewildered peers, bosses and educators.
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Photographed after his arrest with a shaved head and a jarring smile, Loughner bears little resemblance to the longhaired teen high school pals remember.
Kelsey Hawkes, who dated him for several months when she was a freshman and he was a sophomore at Mountain View High, says she couldn't believe it was him after hearing of Loughner's arrest.
"I've always known him as the sweet, caring Jared," says Hawkes, 21, a junior at the University of Arizona. She recalls him as being shy and having low self-esteem. "It's sad knowing the person he was and the person who he could have become — and who he is now."
During the past two years, Loughner's behavior had gotten him fired from a job at a fast-food joint, booted from a volunteer post at an animal shelter and ousted from a community college.
Fellow students at Pima Community College, which banished Loughner for behavior problems last September, sketch a disturbing picture. At a summer class in July, he alternated between nice guy and troublemaker who disrupted a math class by blurting out questions about the end of the world. Mark DeBeliso, 19, says Loughner shouted out questions six or seven times during one 90-minute class. The outbursts focused on the apocalypse and death, DeBeliso says.
"It was the kind of stuff where you'd stop and think, 'What in the world is this kid talking about?' " DeBeliso says.
When algebra professor Ben McGahee reprimanded him, Loughner "would sit there with a grin on his face and mumble something to himself," DeBeliso says.
"I was afraid he was going to bring a weapon like a gun to campus," McGahee says. "One student sat next to the door so she could have a quick getaway."
Loughner didn't finish the six-week class, disappearing after about three weeks, says student Tim Damron, 19. Damron says he and fellow students would tell Loughner to be quiet in defense of the professor.
"We were trying to stick up for (McGahee) because Jared didn't respect the teacher. We would tell him to shut up because he was rude," Damron says.
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Paul Ragan, a professor of psychiatry at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, says news reports about Loughner strongly suggest he was a paranoid schizophrenic. He says schizophrenia, which afflicts about 1% of the population, often becomes apparent between ages 18 and 22.
"Being psychotic is not like a light switch where you're OK one moment and then you're suddenly psychotic," says Ragan, who has no personal knowledge of Loughner's case. "People talk about descending into psychosis. They experience this ego disintegration."
'He was kind of weird'
Former high school friend Zach Olser, 22, recalled Loughner as odd, but not violent.
"He was kind of weird, someone you couldn't figure out," says Olser, who befriended Loughner when they were sophomores. Loughner eventually began rambling incoherent thoughts. "He'd say things and I'd be shocked — random words strung together about imagination, dream, consciousness. You'd try to figure out what he was saying."
Olser occasionally hung out at the white ranch-style home in northwest Tucson that Loughner shares with his parents, Amy and Randy Loughner, who bought the property for $230,000 in March 2006.
His parents have not spoken publicly.
"I don't think he had a good home life. His dad would yell at him over minor things," Olser recalls. "He was becoming unstable. At one point, he was into things like graffiti and minor vandalizing. I was like, 'Dude, this isn't good.' We started to dwindle apart after that."
Olser and Hawkes say Loughner's demeanor may have changed as he began dabbling in alcohol and drugs. Loughner was arrested in 2007 on a charge of possessing drug paraphernalia. Moreover, Loughner's attempt to enlist in the U.S. Army was rejected in December 2008 after he failed a drug test, the Associated Press reported. The 2007 charge and a case in 2008 stemming from marking a public street sign with what he called a Christian symbol were dismissed after Loughner went through diversion programs.
Olser, who lives a few blocks from Loughner, last saw him a few weeks ago, as Loughner was driving his battered 1970 Chevy Nova.
"I knew he was weird, but I didn't think he'd go out and massacre people," says Olser, who coincidentally works as a customer service representative at Sportsman's Warehouse, where Loughner purchased the Glock 19 that authorities say was used in Saturday's shootings.
Like Olser, other former friends had trouble reconciling news reports of a brooding young man with their memories of a kid they saw as happy, friendly and well-liked.
"He was one of the nicest people I've ever known," says Charlie Weaver, 21, who, like Hawkes and Olser, says he was close to Loughner through his early high school years. "He was there for me when I had issues in my life, and I sure wish I could have returned the favor."
'Good vibes from him'
Much of Loughner's school and home life revolved around music, and he seized opportunities to play both in and out of school.
"He was a great sax player, a great musician," says Jes Gundy, 22, who played in the school jazz band with him. "The band director was always trying to get him to play more solos. ... He was reserved, quiet, but not like scary, anti-social quiet. I got nothing but good vibes from him."
Weaver, who plays bass, says he and Loughner used to get together at the home of a drummer friend to jam. Loughner often would be dropped off by his dad and occasionally they would arrive with pizza to eat while they played. "I went over to his house once, Weaver says. "I don't remember it too well, but it all seemed normal. I didn't feel uncomfortable at all."
Weaver and Loughner drifted apart during the latter part of high school. He says Loughner was getting more into reading, particularly philosophy. On the occasions when they did connect, he says, Loughner seemed fine. "There was no point where you could say, 'This is where his views became skewed and he started acting strange,' " Weaver says.
Loughner took a job at a Quiznos sandwich shop a year or so ago. Manager Jose Landeros, 20, says he seemed normal at first but underwent a sort of personality transformation that led to his firing.
Where he once was an enthusiastic worker, he became withdrawn, Landeros says. The firing came when they were short of sandwich bread on the line and a customer asked for a particular type, Landeros says. Instead of finding it or explaining to the customer, Loughner shrugged and did nothing.
"It was kind of strange," Landeros says. "He just wasn't the same."
Still, he says, "You couldn't tell he was the type of person to do that (shooting). He was a regular crewmember who comes in for a shift."
Loughner volunteered at the Pima Animal Care Center, a county shelter, where he walked dogs occasionally in January and February last year. Shelter manager Kim Janes says the only problem was that he walked dogs in places considered unhealthy or unsafe.
"He was walking dogs in an area we didn't want dogs walked," Janes says. "He didn't understand or comprehend what the supervisor was trying to tell him. He was just resistant to that information."
Loughner was asked not to return.
By last summer, when he began taking classes at Pima Community College, classmates and instructors quickly became wary of his odd demeanor and incongruous comments. He was eventually suspended, and campus police notified his parents that Loughner couldn't return without notification from a mental health expert confirming that he posed no danger to himself or others.
However, there's no evidence that anyone tried to force him into mental health treatment.
A check of Pima County court dockets, done for USA TODAY by Chick Arnold, an Arizona mental health lawyer, found no petition to force Loughner into involuntary mental health treatment.
Courtney Knowles, executive director of The Jed Foundation (New York), an advocacy group that educates college administrators about how to recognize and help emotionally unstable students, says, "We encourage schools to have a plan in place for students who are put on leave because of issues related to emotional health."
"These could include making a referral to a mental health provider or educating the family about warnings of suicide," he says.
Jeffrey Lieberman, chairman of the Columbia University Department of Psychiatry in New York City, says, "The path that led to Jared Loughner's horrific actions is, sadly, neither uncommon nor unprecedented. "He is a troubled youth who has exhibited signs of serious mental illness for years, which in his case were cast in the context of political ideology and rhetoric. ... The limited information that has emerged about him strongly suggests that he suffered from a treatable psychotic disorder. These tragedies can be prevented but require the social and political will to do so."
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