Loughner's friend: ‘Jared needed help and Jared didn't get help’ 

Alleged shooter had lately become aggressive, high school pal says

NBC News and news services

Zane Gutierrez, who befriended the alleged Tucson shooter while they attended high school, said he was stunned by the news that his former buddy was the suspect in the bloody attack that left six people dead last weekend.

"It was mortifying, it was horrifying. I ended up sitting in my car for about four hours by myself," he told NBC's TODAY show on Wednesday.
Something about Jared Loughner, identified as the gunman in last weekend’s shootings spree that killed six, including a 9-year-old girl and a federal judge, and gravely wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, began to change recently, Gutierrez said.

"At first Jared was a very receptive person, he was always interested in hearing a new concept, a new idea," Gutierrez said. That changed and lately he had become more aggressive. "He would start yelling, 'No! You're wrong! You're stupid!" Loughner’s friend said.
Anger at Giffords When Loughner, 22, first talked to Gutierrez about his first encounter with Giffords it seemed nothing was amiss. Giffords, 40, continued to recover at the University of Arizona Medical Center five days after being shot in the head.
"He only brought it up once and it never seemed like something that bothered him that much," Gutierrez told TODAY.
But looking back Gutierrez said he sees that the Congresswoman’s inability to answer what even friends thought was a confusing question had troubled the increasingly unbalanced young man. 
"For some reason he felt that his representative … had failed him in some way, shape or form and it really let him down on a personal level," Gutierrez said.

In the end, Loughner was mentally unwell and did not receive proper treatment, Gutierrez said.
"Jared needed help and Jared didn't get help," he said. "The difference with the picture that's going around now with the shaved head, that's not Jared Loughner, that's not my friend, that's a monster."

'Blood libel'
Meantime, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has waded into the debate about whether heated political rhetoric was behind the shooting.
The 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate on Wednesday condemned those who blame political rhetoric for the Arizona the attack in a nearly eight-minute video on her Facebook page .

Last spring, Palin targeted Giffords' district as one of 20 that should be taken back. Palin has been criticized for marking each district with the cross hairs of a gun sight.
As a tragedy unfolded, journalists and pundits should not manufacture what she called a "blood libel" that incites hatred and violence.
Palin said she had "listened at first puzzled, then with concern and now with sadness to the irresponsible statements from people attempting to apportion blame for this terrible event."
The horror of the shooting has touched a national nerve, spurring calls for political rhetoric to be toned down and energizing debates about gun ownership. It has also made gun-friendly Arizona, and Tucson in particular, appear to be a battlefield. 
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COMMENT: FIRST, intelligent, curious, and gentle in HS; then from ages 18-22 he got more and more out of sync with society, to the point that his speech became unintelligible. This appears to be a textbook onset of schizophrenia. Maybe as little as 100 mg of niacin (and perhaps a low- or high-copper diet, whichever was appropriate for him) could have prevented this tragedy; but no, the MEDICAL BUSINESS would rather KILL innocent people than give up some potential profit.

SECOND, Sarah Palin says that some Democrats need to be "taken out" (complete with map on her FB page with crosshairs), then when some people dare to publicize her having done so, SHE accuses THEM of "incit(ing) hatred and violence"... thereby ONCE AGAIN exhibiting one of the hallmarks of the psychopath.
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