January 9, 2011
U.S. Cites Evidence of Assassination Plot
By MARC LACEY and DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
TUCSON — Prosecutors accused Jared Lee Loughner, a troubled 22-year-old college dropout, of five serious federal charges on Sunday, including the attempted assassination of a member of Congress, for his role in a shooting incident that left 20 people wounded, six of them fatally, on Saturday morning.
According to court documents filed in the United States District Court in Phoenix, the authorities seized evidence from Mr. Loughner’s home showing that he had planned to kill Representative Gabrielle Giffords, who was in critical condition on Sunday with a gunshot wound to the head. Tony M. Tayler Jr., an F.B.I. special agent, said in an affidavit supporting the charges that an envelope was found there with the handwritten words “I planned ahead,” ”My assassination” and “Giffords.”Other details about the envelope were not disclosed.
The court documents say that Mr. Loughner purchased the semiautomatic Glock pistol used at the shooting at Sportsman’s Warehouse in Tucson on Nov. 30. The documents also indicate that the suspect had previous contact with the congresswoman: The authorities found a letter from Ms. Giffords thanking Mr. Loughner for attending a 2007 “Congress on Your Corner” event similar to the one she was holding on Saturday morning when she was attacked.
Along with being accused of trying to kill Ms. Giffords, Mr. Loughner was charged with killing or attempting to kill four other United States government officials: United States District Judge John M. Roll and Gabriel Zimmerman, an aide to Ms. Giffords, who were killed, and two more Congressional aides, Pamela Simon and Ron Barber, who were wounded. The shooting of the other 15 people who were wounded or killed in the attack would be state crimes rather than federal crimes; as of Sunday afternoon no state charges had yet been filed.
The authorities released 911 tapes of the minutes after the shooting in which caller after caller, many of them out of breath, dialed in to report that multiple shots had been fired, and that people were falling, too many to count.
The director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Robert S. Mueller III, who traveled to Tucson from Washington to oversee the investigation at President Obama’s request, said at a news conference on Sunday that agents were working intensively to determine “why someone would commit such a heinous act and whether anyone else was involved.”
Early on Sunday, the police released a photograph taken from surveillance video in a nearby store, showing someone who they thought might be a possible accomplice in the shooting. But he turned out to be a taxi driver who dropped the suspect at the shopping mall where the shooting took place, and then entered the supermarket with him when he did not have sufficient change, the sheriff’s department said.
Ms. Giffords, a Democrat, remained in critical condition at University Medical Center in Tucson on Sunday. Her doctors said she was able to respond to simple commands, and they described themselves as “cautiously optimistic.”
At a news conference at the hospital, the congresswoman’s doctors said that she was the only one of the victims of Saturday’s shooting who was still in critical care. They said that she was lucky to be alive, but would not speculate about the likely course of her recovery, which they said could take months or longer.
“Overall, this is about as good as it’s going to get,” said Dr. Peter Rhee, the chief of trauma surgery at the medical center, where Ms. Giffords was brought by helicopter from the shooting scene. “When you get shot in the head and a bullet goes through your brain, the chances of you living are very small, and the chances of you waking up and actually following commands is even much smaller than that.”
Dr. G. Michael Lemole Jr., the chief of neurosurgery, who operated on Ms. Giffords, said that the bullet had traveled through the entire left side of her brain “from back to front,” but had not crossed from one side of the brain to the other, nor did it pass through some critical areas that would further diminish her chances of recovery.
The doctors said Ms. Giffords, 40, was in a medically induced coma, but that they had awoken her several times to check her responsiveness. While the doctors described themselves as extremely pleased with the progress of her treatment, they cautioned that it was too soon to make any predictions. “This is very early in our course,” Dr. Rhee said. “We don’t know what’s going to happen, what her deficits will be in the future or anything like that.”
The doctors said that brain swelling and other complications still posed large risks in the days ahead.
Darci Slaten, a spokeswoman for the medical center, said the congresswoman’s husband, the astronaut and naval officer Capt. Mark E. Kelly, was with her, as were her parents and two stepchildren.
As the doctors provided the update on Sunday, law enforcement authorities tried to piece together what prompted a troubled young man to go on the shooting rampage that killed six people and wounded Ms. Giffords and 13 others.
At the news conference, Sheriff Clarence W. Dupnik of Pima County described a chaotic scene of terror and heroism as the shots rang out. He said one woman who was injured in the shooting fought to wrestle a magazine of ammunition away from the suspected gunman as he tried to reload. He succeeded in reloading, the sheriff said, but was then tackled to the ground by others. Officials, who did not name the woman, said the attack could have been more devastating if she had not tried to stop the man.
The authorities have not asserted any specific motivation for the shootings other than to say that Ms. Giffords was clearly the intended target. Even so, the political reverberations from the attack were felt across the nation and in Washington on Sunday, where flags over the Capitol were flown at half-staff in memory of Mr. Zimmerman, the slain Congressional staff member.
The new House speaker, John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, who ordered the flags lowered, decried the attack in an appearance early Sunday in his hometown, West Chester, and said it was a reminder that public service “comes with a risk.” Mr. Boehner urged prayers for Ms. Giffords and the other victims, and told his House colleagues to persevere in fulfilling their oath of office.
“This inhuman act should not and will not deter us,” he said. “No act, no matter how heinous, must be allowed to stop us.”
He also said the normal business of the House for the coming week had been postponed “so that we can take necessary action regarding yesterday’s events.” That business had included a scheduled debate and vote on a bill to repeal the health care overhaul.
Lawmakers in both parties began a difficult process of soul-searching about the tone of political discourse, as they wondered aloud whether heated rhetoric might somehow have contributed to the bloodshed in Arizona.
In a roundtable discussion with colleagues on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Democrat of Florida and a friend of Ms. Giffords, said that Americans both inside and outside of government had a responsibility to temper the political discourse.
“It’s a moment for both parties in Congress together,” Ms. Wasserman Schultz said. “We absolutely have to realize that we’re all in this for the same reason, to make America a better place.” She noted that House Democrats and Republicans would soon hold separate “retreats,” and urged that the caucuses also meet together.
“I hope that the Democratic and Republican leadership will make a decision for us to have some kind of not-just-token unity event,” she said. “We should have an event where we spend some time together talking about how we can work better together and then we can move forward together and try to avoid tragedies like this.”
Mr. Loughner, who was in federal custody, refused to cooperate with investigators and invoked his Fifth Amendment rights on Saturday, the sheriff’s office said.
Mr. Loughner had exhibited increasingly strange behavior in recent months, including ominous Internet postings — at least one showing a gun — and a series of videos in which he made disjointed statements on topics like the gold standard and mind control.
Pima Community College said he had been suspended for conduct violations and that he withdrew in October after five instances of classroom or library disruptions that involved the campus police.
As the investigation intensified on Sunday, police were still at the scene of the shooting, a shopping center known at La Toscana Village. Investigators have described the evidence collection as a painstaking task, given the large number of bullets fired and victims hit.
Mark Kimble, an aide to Ms. Giffords, said the shooting occurred about 10 a.m. local time in an alcove outside a Safeway supermarket, between an American flag and an Arizona flag. He said that he went into the store for coffee, and that as he came out again the gunman started firing.
Ms. Giffords had been talking to a couple about Medicare reimbursements, and Judge Roll had just walked up to her and shouted “Hi,” when the gunman, wearing sunglasses and perhaps a hood of some sort, approached and shot the judge, Mr. Kimble said. “Everyone hit the ground,” he said. “It was so shocking.”
Ms. Giffords, who represents the Eighth District in the southeastern corner of Arizona, has been an outspoken critic of the state’s tough immigration law, which is focused on identifying, prosecuting and deporting illegal immigrants, and she was criticized by conservatives for her vote in favor of the health care law.
Friends said she had received threats over the years. Judge Roll had been involved in immigration cases and had also received death threats.
The police said Ms. Giffords’s district office was evacuated late on Saturday after a suspicious package was found, but that police officers later cleared the scene.
Ms. Giffords, widely known as Gabby, had been speaking to constituents under a large white banner bearing her name when the gunman began firing. He tried to escape but was tackled by bystanders and held until the police arrived. The event was Ms. Giffords’s first public meeting with constituents since she was sworn in for a third term on Wednesday.
Ms. Giffords, who first won office in her Republican-tilting district in 2006, barely squeaked to victory in 2010 over a Republican challenger, Jesse Kelly, but she said she had clearly heard the message that constituents were dissatisfied with Democratic leaders in Washington.
Rabbi Stephanie Aaron, who in 2007 officiated at the wedding of Ms. Giffords and Capt. Mark E. Kelly and who leads Congregation Chaverim in Tucson, said the congresswoman had never expressed any concern about her safety. “No fear — I’ve only seen the bravest possible, most intelligent young congresswoman,” Rabbi Aaron said. “I feel like this is really one of those proverbial — seemingly something coming out of nowhere.”
Marc Lacey reported from Tucson, and David M. Herszenhorn from Washington. Joseph Berger contributed reporting from New York and Michael D. Shear contributed from Washington.
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