Gabrielle Giffords shooting: Frightening, twisted shrine in Arizona killer Jared Lee Loughner's yard 
 
 DAILY NEWS EXCLUSIVE Miniature altar with human skull replica in backyard tent at Jared Lee Loughner's home. 
 
 DAILY NEWS EXCLUSIVE Tent containing shrine in Jared Lee Loughner's Tucson backyard. FOR MORE PHOTOS OF LOUGHNER'S HOUSE AND THE SCENE OF THE SHOOTING, CLICK THE ABOVE IMAGE. Take Our Poll Gun Control in the U.S. What do you think of current gun laws in the United States? Current laws are too strict. Any infringement upon gun owners' rights is an infringement upon the 2nd amendment. Current laws are not strict enough. We need to regulate access to deadly weapons. Not sure. Related News Articles 
 
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 A sinister shrine reveals a chilling occult dimension in the mind of the deranged gunman accused of shooting a member of Congress and 19 others. 
 
 Hidden within a camouflage tent behind Jared Lee Loughner's home sits an alarming altar with a skull sitting atop a pot filled with shriveled oranges. 
 
 A row of ceremonial candles and a bag of potting soil lay nearby, photos reveal. 
 
 Experts on Sunday said the elements are featured in the ceremonies of a number of occult groups. 
 
 Investigators have focused on Loughner's online anti-government ramblings as the chief motivation for the shooting Saturday of U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.). 
 
 The discovery of the shrine raises the possibility that Loughner, 22, may have been driven by other forces. Students and faculty at Pima Community College, which he attended until his suspension last summer, said Loughner was clearly at odds with the world. 
 
 CLICK HERE FOR MORE PHOTOS OF JARED LEE LOUGHNER'S HOUSE, THE SCENE OF THE TUSCON SHOOTING AND THE VICTIMS.... 
 
 "He was one of the last kids tocome in, and he sat down and almost immediately started laughing to himself in a way that was just kind of creepy," a classmate, Alex Kotonias, 20, told USA Today. 
 
 "As soon as the teacher started going over the syllabus, he had this outburst out of nowhere, didn't even raise his hand, and started asking the teacher some sort of weird questions about whether he believed in mind control." 
 
 Adjunct Prof. Ben McGahee, 28, worried about violence. "I remember going home and thinking to myself, 'Is he going to bring a weapon to class?'" he told USA Today. 
 
 Lynda Sorenson, 52, who was in McGahee's basic algebra class with Loughner, expressed similar fears in emails to friends, The Washington Post reports. 
 
 
 
 Inside Jared Lee Loughner's home (DAILY NEWS EXCLUSIVE). 
 
 Adjunct Prof. Ben McGahee, 28, worried about violence. "I remember going home and thinking to myself, 'Is he going to bring a weapon to class?'" he told USA Today. 
 
 Lynda Sorenson, 52, who was in McGahee's basic algebra class with Loughner, expressed similar fears in emails to friends, The Washington Post reports. 
 
 On June 14, she wrote: "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." 
 
 In September, college officials sent campus police officers to Loughner's home, where he lives with his parents, with a letter informing him he could not return without a mental health professional's written assurance that hispresence at college would "notpresent a danger to himself or others." 
 
 "It was obvious to everyone that Jared wasn't a normal guy,"said neighbor Anthony Woods, 19. 
 
 Loughner worked as a volunteer at the Pima Animal Care Center, where he walked dogs and cleaned cages. "He loved animals and was a good worker," said another volunteer. 
 
 Loughner had once tried to join the military but was deemed unsuitable, officials said. 
 
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 At 2:00 a.m. on Saturday—about eight hours before he allegedly killed six people and wounded 14, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), in Tucson—Jared Lee Loughner phoned an old and close friend with whom he had gone to high school and college. The friend, Bryce Tierney, was up late watching TV, but he didn’t answer the call. When he later checked his voice mail, he heard a simple message from Loughner: “Hey man, it’s Jared. Me and you had good times. Peace out. Later.” 
 
 That was it. But later in the day, when Tierney first heard about the Tucson massacre, he had a sickening feeling: “They hadn’t released the name, but I said, ‘Holy shit, I think it’s Jared that did it.'” Tierney tells Mother Jones in an exclusive interview that Loughner held a years-long grudge against Giffords and had repeatedly derided her as a “fake.” Loughner’s animus toward Giffords intensified after he attended one of her campaign events and she did not, in his view, sufficiently answer a question he had posed, Tierney says. He also describes Loughner as being obsessed with “lucid dreaming”—that is, the idea that conscious dreams are an alternative reality that a person can inhabit and control—and says Loughner became “more interested in this world than our reality.” Tierney adds, “I saw his dream journal once. That’s the golden piece of evidence. You want to know what goes on in Jared Loughner’s mind, there’s a dream journal that will tell you everything.” 
 
 On Sunday, federal prosecutors charged 22-year-old Loughner with one count of attempting to assassinate a member of Congress, two counts of unlawfully killing a federal employee, and two counts of attempting to kill a federal employee. Giffords was the target of Loughner’s rampage, prosecutors say, and the sworn affidavit accompanying the charges mentions that Loughner attended a Giffords “Congress in Your Corner” event in 2007. The affidavit also mentions that police searching a safe in Loughner’s home found a letter from Giffords’ office thanking the alleged shooter for attending an August 25, 2007 event.* 
 
 Tierney, who’s also 22, recalls Loughner complaining about a Giffords event he attended during that period. He’s unsure whether it was the same one mentioned in the charges—Loughner “might have gone to some other rallies,” he says—but Tierney notes it was a significant moment for Loughner: “He told me that she opened up the floor for questions and he asked a question. The question was, ‘What is government if words have no meaning?'” 
 
 “He said, ‘Can you believe it, they wouldn’t answer my question.’ Ever since that, he thought she was fake, he had something against her.” 
 
 Giffords’ answer, whatever it was, didn’t satisfy Loughner. “He said, ‘Can you believe it, they wouldn’t answer my question,’ and I told him, ‘Dude, no one’s going to answer that,'” Tierney recalls. “Ever since that, he thought she was fake, he had something against her.” 
 
 Tierney says he has “no clue” why Loughner might have “shot all those other people.” But, he notes, “when I heard Gabrielle Giffords has been shot, I was like ‘Oh my God…’ For some reason I felt like I knew…I felt like if anyone was going to shoot her, it would be Jared.” 
 
 Loughner would occasionally mention Giffords, according to Tierney: “It wasn’t a day-in, day-out thing, but maybe once in a while, if Giffords did something that was ridiculous or passed some stupid law or did something stupid, he related that to people. But the thing I remember most is just that question. I don’t remember him stalking her or anything.” Tierney notes that Loughner did not display any specific political or ideological bent: “It wasn’t like he was in a certain party or went to rallies…It’s not like he’d go on political rants.” But Loughner did, according to Tierney, believe that government is “fucking us over.” He never heard Loughner vent about the perils of “currency,” as Loughner did on one YouTube video he created. 
 
 Tierney, who first met Loughner in middle school, recalls that Loughner started to act strange around his junior or senior year of high school. Before that, Loughner was just a “normal kid,” says Tierney. When the two friends started hanging out in sophomore year of high school, “there was nothing really dark about Jared,” Tierney says. “He was playing drums, doing band things, playing sax. He was raised on writing and reading music.” Loughner also did a lot of creative writing in his high school days, Tierney says, and he used to carry around a copy of a short story he wrote involving a character named Angel; he’d ask people if they would like to read it. “It had a lot of hidden metaphors in it,” Tierney says. 
 
 As Loughner and Tierney grew closer, Tierney got used to spending the first ten minutes or so of every day together arguing with Loughner’s “nihilist” view of the world. “By the time he was 19 or 20, he was really fascinated with semantics and how the world is really nothing—illusion,” Tierney says. 
 
 Loughner would tell Tierney and his friends that life “means nothing.” 
 
 Once, Tierney recalls, Loughner told him, “I’m pretty sure I’ve come to the conclusion that words mean nothing.” Loughner would also tell Tierney and his friends that life “means nothing,” and they’d reply, “If it means nothing, what you’re saying means nothing.” Other times, Tierney says, Loughner acted like any teen: “We’d go to concerts, play music, get into trouble.” 
 
 Tierney believes that Loughner was very interested in pushing people’s buttons—and that may have been why he listed Hitler’s Mein Kampf as one of his favorite books on his YouTube page. (Loughner’s mom is Jewish, according to Tierney.**) Loughner sometimes approached strangers and would say “weird” things, Tierney recalls. “He would do it because he thought people were below him and he knew they wouldn’t know what he was talking about.” 
 
 In college, Loughner became increasingly intrigued with “lucid dreaming,” and he grew convinced that he could control his dreams, according to Tierney. In a series of rambling videos posted to his YouTube page, dreams are a frequent topic. In a video posted on December 15, Loughner writes, “My favorite activity is conscience dreaming: the greatest inspiration for my political business information. Some of you don’t dream—sadly.” In another video, he writes, “The population of dreamers in the United States of America is less than 5%!” Later in the same video he says, “I’m a sleepwalker—who turns off the alarm clock.” 
 
 “When you realize you’re dreaming, you can do anything, you can create anything.” 
 
 Loughner believed that dreams could be a sort of alternative, Matrix-style reality, and “that when you realize you’re dreaming, you can do anything, you can create anything,” Tierney says. Loughner started his “dream journal” in an attempt to take more control of his dreams, his friend notes, and he kept this journal for over a year. 
 
 In October 2008, Tierney was living in Phoenix, and Loughner came to visit. They went to see a Mars Volta concert with friends, and Tierney was surprised when Loughner said he had quit partying “completely.” Loughner, according to Tierney, said, “I’m going to lead a more healthy lifestyle, not smoke cigarettes or pot anymore, and I’m going to start working out.” Tierney was happy for his friend: “I said, ‘Dude, that’s awesome.’ And the next time I saw him he was 10 pounds lighter.” Tierney never saw Loughner smoke marijuana again, and he was surprised at media reports that Loughner had been rejected from the military in 2009 for failing a drug test: “He was clean, clean. I saw him after that continuously. He would not do it.” 
 
 After Loughner apparently gave up drugs and booze, “his theories got worse,” Tierney says. “After he quit, he was just off the wall.” And Loughner started to drift away from his group of friends about a year ago. By early 2010, dreaming had become Loughner’s “waking life, his reality,” Tierney says. “He sort of drifted off, didn’t really care about hanging out with friends. He’d be sleeping a lot.” Loughner’s alternate reality was attractive, Tierney says. “He figured out he could fly.” Loughner, according to Tierney, told his friends, “I’m so into it because I can create things and fly. I’m everything I’m not in this world.” 
 
 “He figured out he could fly.” 
 
 But in this world, Loughner seemed ticked off by what he believed to be a pervasive authoritarianism. “The government is implying mind control and brainwash on the people by controlling grammar,” he wrote in one YouTube video. In another, Loughner complains that when he tried to join the military, he was handed a “mini-Bible.” That upset him: “I didn’t write a belief on my Army application and the recruiter wrote on the application: None,” he wrote on YouTube. In messages on MySpace last month, Loughner declared, “I’ll see you on National T.v.! This is foreshadow.” He also noted on the website, “I don’t feel good: I’m ready to kill a police officer! I can say it.” 
 
 One of the last times Loughner and Tierney saw each other, a mutual friend had recently purchased a .22-caliber rifle. Until then, Loughner had never shown much interest in guns, Tierney says. “My friend had just gotten a .22, and Jared kept saying we should go shooting together.” But Tierney and the friend who had bought the .22 demurred. “We were sketched out,” Tierney says, “and we were like, ‘I don’t think Jared’s a good person to go shooting with.'” That was in February or March 2010. After that, Tierney didn’t hear much from Loughner. 
 
 Since hearing of the rampage, Tierney has been trying to figure out why Loughner did what he allegedly did. “More chaos, maybe,” he says. “I think the reason he did it was mainly to just promote chaos. He wanted the media to freak out about this whole thing. He wanted exactly what’s happening. He wants all of that.” Tierney thinks that Loughner’s mindset was like the Joker in the most recent Batman movie: “He fucks things up to fuck shit up, there’s no rhyme or reason, he wants to watch the world burn. He probably wanted to take everyone out of their monotonous lives: ‘Another Saturday, going to go get groceries’—to take people out of these norms that he thought society had trapped us in.” 
 
 Tierney dwells on the phone call he missed early Saturday morning. But it was late, and the TV show Tierney was watching was creeping him out. So he didn’t pick up. “I sort of wish I would have,” he says. “I wonder what would have happened if I answered it.” 
 
 *This sentence has been corrected to reflect that August 30, 2007 was the date of the letter, not the date of the event itself. The event was on August 25. 
 
 **Tierney says Loughner’s mom is Jewish. But a columnist who researched the subject doesn’t think that holds up. Tierney also said that Loughner himself was definitely not religious. 
 
 MoJo’s full coverage of the shooting and its aftermath is here. ||||| Documents released Wednesday detailing the shooting of former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords show how the gunman had grown increasingly erratic and delusional in the months leading up to the rampage as he alienated friends and family and became paranoid that police were out to get him. 
 
 FILE - This photo released Tuesday, Feb. 22, 2011, by the U.S. Marshal's Service shows Jared Lee Loughner, who pleaded guilty in the Tucson, Ariz., shooting rampage that killed six people and left several... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In this Jan. 8, 2011 file photo, Emergency personnel and Daniel Hernandez, an intern for U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, second right, move Giffords after she was shot in the head outside a shopping... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In this Jan. 30, 2012 file photo, former Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was seriously injured in the mass shooting that killed six people in Tucson, Ariz., in January 2011, is aided by her... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In this Jan. 8, 2011 file photo, emergency personnel attend to a shooting victim outside a shopping center in Tucson, Ariz., where U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., and others were shot as... (Associated Press) 
 
 The roughly 2,700 pages included witness and survivor accounts from people who helped save Giffords' life after she was shot in the head outside a Tucson supermarket in 2011 during a meet-and-greet with constituents. Six people were killed and 11 others were wounded. 
 
 The files also provide the first glimpse into gunman Jared Lee Loughner's family. His parents have said nothing publicly beyond a brief statement after the attack, but records show they were trying to deal with a son who had grown nearly impossible to communicate with. 
 
 "I tried to talk to him. But you can't. He wouldn't let you," his father, Randy Loughner, told police. "Lost, lost and just didn't want to communicate with me no more." 
 
 "Sometimes you'd hear him in his room, like, having conversations," said his mother, Amy Loughner. "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." 
 
 Randy Loughner said his 24-year-old son had never been diagnosed with mental illness. Despite recommendations from officials at Pima Community College, which expelled Loughner, that he undergo a mental evaluation, his parents never followed up. 
 
 However, Loughner's parents grew worried enough about their son that they drug tested him. 
 
 The results were negative, said Amy Loughner, who was particularly worried that her son might have been using methamphetamine. 
 
 She said Loughner had told his parents that he had not had a drink of alcohol in five months but that he had tried marijuana and cocaine in the past. 
 
 The father said his son kept journals, but they were written in an indecipherable script. 
 
 Several weeks before the shooting, Loughner visited Anthony George Kuck, who had known him since preschool. Kuck said he was alarmed to find he had shaved his head and was armed with a handgun. 
 
 "I kicked him out of my house because he showed me his gun," Kuck told police, adding that Loughner said he bought it for protection. 
 
 "I tried to talk to him about why it's not smart to have a gun," Kuck said. "He obviously didn't listen to me." 
 
 Kuck told police he had seen Loughner's mental state deteriorate over time, starting with drinking problems in high school, trouble with authorities and being kicked out of college, noting Loughner had gotten tattoos of bullets and a gun on his shoulder. 
 
 "I know he has some crazy thoughts where he ... just believes the government is corrupt, and he has all these assumptions on things, that he doesn't really know what he's talking about," Kuck told investigators. 
 
 While he never heard him mention Giffords "he just seemed to have some kind of ... hate for government," Kuck added. 
 
 Kuck's roommate, Derek Andrew Heintz, who has known Loughner since he was about 12, said he was cooking when Loughner showed up with a gun and removed it from his belt. It was loaded with 32 rounds. 
 
 He asked Loughner why he had the weapon. "There's no need for it here," Heintz told him. 
 
 "I just want to show you,'" Loughner replied. 
 
 Loughner then left Heintz with a souvenir _ one bullet. 
 
 On the day of the Jan. 8, 2011, shooting, a friend, Bryce Tierney, told investigators Loughner called him early in the morning and left a cryptic voice mail that he believed was suicidal. 
 
 "He just said, `Hey, this is Jared. Um, we had some good times together. Uh, see you later.' And that's it," Tierney said. 
 
 He recalled for detectives a time when Giffords visited Pima Community College, where the two attended classes together. 
 
 Loughner asked her, "What is government and stuff?" Tierney said. "She couldn't give him the answer. ... I feel like he had ... something against Gabrielle Giffords." 
 
 Tierney also described Loughner's apparent spiral into madness, saying his behavior was growing strange "in a dark way." He said Loughner would send him text messages that he called "nihilistic ... the belief in nothing." 
 
 Onetime Loughner friend Zachary Osler also described the shooter's increasing isolation from his other friends and acquaintances in the years leading up to the shooting. 
 
 He explained how he worked at a sporting goods store where Loughner bought the Glock 9 mm handgun used in the shooting. He was questioned about seeing Loughner shopping there, sometime before Thanksgiving, and described his awkward encounter with the man. 
 
 "His response is nothing. Just a mute facial expression. And just like he, he didn't care," Osler told authorities. 
 
 Osler also told investigators he had grown uncomfortable with Loughner's strange personality. 
 
 "He would say he could dream and then control what he was doing while he was dreaming," Osler said. 
 
 Still, he said he was shocked to learn Loughner had carried out such an attack. 
 
 "And I was like, `I know this person. Why would he do it? What would his motive be?'" he added, noting that Loughner had never mentioned Giffords in the past. 
 
 When he was arrested at the scene, Loughner was wearing peach-colored foam earplugs, authorities wrote in the documents. He was polite and cooperative as detectives began their hours-long initial interview. 
 
 As Loughner sat in restraints in an interview room, the conversation was confined mainly to small talk. Little was said over the first four hours. Loughner asked if he could use the restroom, then at one point complained he felt sore. 
 
 "I'm about ready to fall over," he said. 
 
 Giffords intern Daniel Hernandez described how constituents and others were lining up to see Giffords that morning. He helped people sign in and recalled handing the sheet on a clipboard to Loughner. 
 
 "The next thing I hear is someone yell, `Gun,'" said Hernandez, who rushed to tend to Giffords' gunshot wound to the head. 
 
 "She couldn't open her eyes. I tried to get any responses from her. It looked like her left side was the only side that was still mobile," Hernandez told authorities. "She couldn't speak. It was mumbled. She was squeezing my hand." 
 
 Hernandez explained how he had some training as a nurse and first checked for a pulse. 
 
 "She was still breathing. Her breathing was getting shallower," he said. "I then lifted her up so that she wasn't flat on the ground." 
 
 The documents detailing the event and ensuing investigation had been kept private until being released by the Pima County Sheriff's Department. 
 
 News organizations seeking the records were repeatedly denied access in the months after the shooting and the arrest of Loughner, who was sentenced in November to seven consecutive life sentences, plus 140 years, after he pleaded guilty to 19 federal charges. 
 
 Last month, U.S. District Judge Larry Burns cleared the way for the release of the records after Star Publishing Company, which publishes the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson, sought their release. The judge said Loughner's fair-trial rights were no longer on the line now that his criminal case has resolved. 
 
 Loughner's guilty plea enabled him to avoid the death sentence. He is serving his sentence at a federal prison medical facility in Springfield, Mo., where he was initially diagnosed with schizophrenia and forcibly given psychotropic drug treatments. 
 
 Arizona's chief federal judge and a 9-year-old girl were among those killed in the rampage. Giffords was left partially blind, with a paralyzed right arm and brain injury. She resigned from Congress last year and has since started, along with her husband, a gun-control advocacy group. 
 
 The Star said it wanted the records because they contain information about how a mass shooting occurs, including how long it took Loughner to fire gunshots _ an issue raised by some advocates in the debate over high-capacity pistol magazines. 
 
 Phoenix Newspapers Inc., which publishes The Arizona Republic, and KPNX-TV had joined Star Publishing in the latest effort to get the records released after The Washington Post's initial request was denied in March 2011. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Associated Press writers Michael R. Blood and Justin Pritchard in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
– As though Jared Lee Loughner didn’t already seem crazy enough, a strange shrine complete with a replica of a human skull has been found in his backyard. Inside a camouflage tent, Loughner has a small altar, atop which sits a pot filled with shriveled oranges, the skull replica, a row of candles, and a bag of potting soil, the New York Daily News reports. Experts tell the paper that the objects are common to many occult ceremonies. Loughner was obsessed with lucid dreaming, the process of attempting to consciously control one’s dreams, one friend tells Mother Jones. “I saw his dream journal once. That’s the golden piece of evidence,” he says. “You want to know what goes on in Jared Loughner’s mind, there’s a dream journal that will tell you everything.” He also says that Loughner had been obsessed with Giffords ever since she failed to answer his question at a campaign event. “The question was, ‘What is government if words have no meaning?’ … I told him, ‘Dude, no one’s going to answer that.’”