January 14, 2011
Police Describe Photos of Loughner Posing With Gun
By MARC LACEY, JO BECKER and TIMOTHY WILLIAMS
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TUCSON — Law enforcement officials said Friday they have multiple photos of Jared L. Loughner posing with a Glock 9mm pistol next to his naked buttocks and dressed in a bright red g-string. It is the same model of weapon as the one the police say Mr. Loughner used last Saturday to kill six people, including a federal judge and a 9-year-old girl, and to wound 14 others, including an Arizona congresswoman. The photos were turned over to the police by Walgreens, where Mr. Loughner had taken them to be developed. In some of the photos he is holding the gun near his crotch, and in others, presumably shot in a mirror, he is holding the gun next to his buttocks, the police said. It was not yet clear when the photos were taken or whether Mr. Loughner had ordered prints.
The Pima County Sherriff’s Department on Friday released a recording of a 911 call made by Bryce Tierney, a friend of Mr. Loughner, in the hours after the shooting rampage. In it, Mr. Tierney can be heard telling the operator that Mr. Loughner had called him the night before the shooting from a restricted number.
“The shooter was someone that I knew,” Mr. Tierney said. “He left a message on my phone at, like, 2 in the morning last night. He didn’t say anything about shooting people or anything.”Earlier on Friday, as the funeral of another victim of last week’s shooting rampage was held, doctors said that Representative Gabrielle Giffords continued to make significant medical progress.
“We couldn’t have hoped for any better improvement than we’re seeing right now given the severity of her injury initially,” said Dr. G. Michael Lemole Jr., chief of neurosurgery at University Medical Center in Tucson. “We can even think she is beginning to carry out more complex sequences of events, more complex sequences of activities in response to our commands, and even spontaneously. So we’re very encouraged she’s continued to make all the right moves in the right direction.”
Last Saturday, Ms. Giffords, 40, an Arizona Democrat, was meeting with constituents in a Tucson supermarket parking lot when a gunman opened fire, killing 6 people and wounding 14, including Ms. Giffords. Among the dead were John M. Roll, the chief federal judge in Arizona, and 9-year-old Christina-Taylor Green.
Christina’s funeral was held Thursday.
The funeral for Mr. Roll was held Friday and attended by Gov. Jan Brewer, Senator John McCain and other state and federal officials.
Three others wounded in the shooting remained at University Medical Center on Friday and were listed in good condition. Authorities believe Ms. Giffords was the target of the attack.
Ron Barber, 65, a director in one of Ms. Giffords’ district offices — and among those injured in the shooting — was released from the hospital Friday morning so he could attend Judge Roll’s funeral.
Ms. Giffords’s doctors have said that she is now able to keep her eyes open for as long as 15 minutes and can move her legs and hands, although her right hand has only slight movement. There are no plans to immediately remove a breathing tube that has been left in place as a precautionary measure. The congresswoman, doctors said, is able to breathe on her own.
Ms. Giffords’ husband, Mark E. Kelly, who is an astronaut, wrote in a Twitter post Friday: “Thanks for all of the messages of support. I have some great followers. GG has been improving each day.”
On Thursday, NASA announced that it was appointing a backup leader for the space shuttle mission to be headed by Mr. Kelly.
“Mark is still the commander” of the mission, scheduled for April, said Peggy Whitson, chief astronaut.
Naming Frederick W. Sturckow to the mission, she said, would allow the crew to continue training and Commander Kelly to “focus on his wife’s care.”
Doctors have called Ms. Giffords’s progress “a major leap forward” but continued to express caution Friday, saying that for now, they would not upgrade Ms. Giffords, from critical condition.
Dr. Peter Rhee, head of trauma at the hospital, said in an interview Thursday that the team planned to bring an expert neuro-ophthalmologist and oculoplastic surgeon to help assess whether the injuries to the bones around Ms. Giffords’s eyes had damaged her vision.
“I believe one day she will be able to think,” Dr. Rhee said. “What she will be able to do physically, it is too early to say.”
In response to a reporter’s question Thursday about whether Ms. Giffords’s recovery might be considered miraculous, Dr. Lemole said: “Miracles happen every day, and in medicine, we like to attribute them to what we do or what others do around us. A lot of medicine is outside our control. We are wise to acknowledge miracles.”
Jared L. Loughner, 22, has been charged in federal court with shooting Ms. Giffords and four others who were federal employees. He is expected to face state prosecution for the rest of the victims.
On Friday, the Sheriff’s Office said that when Mr. Loughner was arrested after the shooting he had in his pockets two 15-round magazines; a four-inch buck knife; a plastic bag containing money; a Visa card; and his Arizona driver’s license. A deputy recovered Mr. Loughner’s pistol, which was on the ground after Mr. Loughner had been wrestled down by bystanders.
On Thursday, Barbara LaWall, the Pima County attorney, said the state would have the authority to prosecute Mr. Loughner on its own, including murder charges for the killing of Judge Roll and for the attempted murder of Ms. Giffords.
Because Mr. Loughner is in federal custody, the ordinary deadline required under state law — 10 days from arrest to filing or dropping of charges — does not apply, so county prosecutors have ample time to draft a case, Ms. LaWall said.
She said a main concern at this point was logistics: whether it would be possible for the state and federal cases to proceed simultaneously, and how witnesses and the defendant would be transported for appearances.
Ms. LaWall said because of the deep trauma caused by the mass shooting, she wanted the process to be as smooth as possible for the victims and the families who would be called to testify.
The county sheriff’s office said on Thursday that it had recovered a black bag containing 9-millimeter ammunition that it thought might belong to the suspect. Mr. Loughner, according to the police, grabbed a similar bag out of one of his family’s vehicles on Saturday, hours before the shooting. The police said they were told by Randy Loughner, Mr. Loughner’s father, that when he confronted his son about what was inside, the younger Mr. Loughner ran into the desert carrying the bag.
A hiker found the bag while walking his dog Thursday in a wash in the desert near the Loughner home, the police said.
As authorities continued to investigate, Dr. Rhee said on Thursday that Ms. Giffords was now capable of a range of activities she had previously been unable to perform. “She is doing fairly specific things with her left hand,” he said. “In the morning, she is yawning. She is starting to rub her eyes, and she’ll spontaneously wake up.”
Dr. Lemole said Ms. Giffords could also “move both of her legs to command” and had communicated with family members by raising her left hand.
Dr. Lemole also said Ms. Giffords could sit up and that if someone told her, “Lift your legs up,” she would.
Ms. Giffords opened her eyes for the first time Wednesday shortly after a visit from President Obama and while several of her Congressional colleagues were in the hospital room. Mr. Obama relayed the news to the nation during his speech that evening.
Dr. Rhee said on Thursday that the right half of Ms. Giffords’s body had not recovered as quickly as the left, but that the right side was also “starting to make some very forward progress that we are happy about.”
Doctors described a regimen “of very aggressive physical therapy” undergone by Ms. Giffords on Thursday morning, which included dangling her legs over the side of the hospital bed, exercising her muscles and working on her balance.
“She is still holding her own. She is still following simple commands, and for me, that tells me that her higher brain center is working,” said Dr. Lemole.
Marc Lacey reported from Tucson, and Timothy Williams from New York. Jo Becker, Kirk Johnson, Richard A. Oppel Jr. and Jennifer Medina contributed reporting from Tucson, and John Schwartz and Catrin Einhorn from New York.
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Palins' fault.
