US shooting suspect video released
Film records behaviour of man accused of attack that killed six people and injured US congresswoman.
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| The attack in Tucson left six people dead and several others injured [Reuters] |
A home video filmed by the man accused of the Arizona shooting that left six people dead and 13 others including a Democratic congresswoman injured, has been released by the community college he attended.
The four-minute video, which is on the video-sharing website Youtube, is narrated by Jared Lee Loughner as he walks around Pima Community College at night.
The college, which had suspended Loughner for disruptive conduct, released the video late on Friday.
In the video, Loughner says: “Alright, so here’s what we’re doing. We are examining the torture of students,” as he walks past classrooms on the college’s West Side campus.
“This is Jared from Pima College,” Loughner says before the video ends.
John Terret, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Washington, said: “The video shows him roaming around the campus late at night. In the video you hear his ramblings about currency and the constitution. At one point he says ‘this is my genocide school’.
“It’s getting a lot of play here in the United States and doctors say it shows Jared Lee Loughner’s sickness and also his sadness.”
Victim arrested
Loughner is charged with five counts for allegedly firing into a crowd outside a grocery store in Tucson on January 8.
Six people died in the attack, including a nine-year-old girl, and 13 people were injured, among them Gabrielle Giffords, a US congresswoman who had been meeting constituents outside a supermarket at the time of the attack.
Giffords remains in a critical condition in hospital but on Saturday it was announced that she had been taken off a ventilator and was breathing on her own through a tube inserted into her windpipe.
A statement on the hospital’s website said that Gifford’s “recovery continues as planned”.
Separately, police arrested one of the victims of the shooting and ordered him to undergo a mental evaluation after he threatened a leader of the conservative Tea Party movement.
James Eric Fuller, who was shot in the knee in the Tucson attack, objected to comments by Trent Humphries, a Tea Party leader, during a town hall meeting organised and being filmed by the American new channel ABC.
Fuller took a photograph of Humphries and yelled “you’re dead, you’re crazy”.