Open Thread: Bizarre Bits of News on the Arizona Shootings

According to ABC News, the night before his shocking rampage, Jared Loughner tried to develop photos of himself wearing only a g-string and holding his Glock. The photos were turned over to police by a Tucson Walgreens.

The Pima County Sherriff’s Office confirmed to ABC News they had received the photographs from the store and turned them over to the FBI.

The photos, presumably shot in a mirror, show Loughner, 22, posing with the same make of gun he allegedly used in the Jan. 8 shooting. In the photos he holds the pistol against his crotch and buttocks while wearing a bright red thong, sources told ABC News.

The visual I got from that is of Travis Bickel in Taxi Driver talking to himself in the mirror while drawing his guns. What a surreal nightmare this story is!

Have you heard right wingers claiming that if someone had been present at the scene of the shooting who had a gun it could have saved lives? Well, it turns out there was someone like that present, and he almost shot the man who had just disarmed Loughner!

“I carry a gun so I was — I felt like I was a little bit more prepared to do some good and than maybe somebody else would have been,” Joe Zamudio told MSNBC’s Ed Schultz Monday.

“As I came out of the door of the Walgreens, sir, I saw several individuals wrestling with him and I came running. I was already at a full sprint and you know, there’s no time to think about anything,” he explained.

“I saw another individual holding the firearm. I kind of assumed he was the shooter. So I grabbed his wrist and you know told him to drop it and forced him to drop the gun on the ground. When he did that, everybody says, no, no, it’s this guy.”

[….]

…when I came through the door, I had my hand on the butt of my pistol and I clicked the safety off. I was ready to kill him….”I would have shot the man holding the gun,” he added.

Unbelievable.

Is it possible that Loughner had been threatening other legislators than Giffords? According to KGO TV in San Francisco, investigators in the Arizona case have contacted a California State Senator, Leland Yee about threats he received after criticizing Sarah Palin in 2010.

Detectives investigating the shooting of U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona last weekend are considering a connection to California Sen. Leland Yee, who received death threats for criticizing former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin last year.

It’s not clear what connection Arizona authorities suspect.

Yee’s spokesman Adam Keigwin….said Yee’s office received threats relevant to Giffords’ investigation in April 2010, when the senator helped reveal that officials at California State University, Stanislaus shredded documents related to Palin’s contract fees as a keynote speaker.

During the incident, students dug through a trash bin outside a campus administration building and found a shredded contract with a speaker who required first-class air travel from Anchorage, Alaska.

Yee chided the university in news reports, and in response, several voice, text and graphic threats were sent to his office.

Here’s a Huffpo article from April that give details on the threats.

You’ve probably heard that one of the survivors of the shooting, Eric Fuller, blames right wingers like Beck, Angle, and Palin for Loughner’s rampage. You can watch an interview with him at Democracy Now.

Tonight there’s news that Fuller tried to visit Loughner’s parents at home.

Suffering from a bullet-wound to the knee, Fuller got out of his car and limped to the door. He said he decided to stop by on the way to a doctor’s appointment.

“So I thought I’d come over here and try to forgive them,” he said. “I know that sounds crazy.”

He sounds really traumatized. It’s kind of scary to think of what these survivors face in a place like Arizona where there may not be a lot of public health support to help them deal with what they are going through. They really need to be in touch with each other in some kind of therapy group situation, IMHO. On the other hand, the police might not like that, because they could end up getting their stories mixed up.

Police have released a timeline of Loughner’s activities leading up to the shootings.

NPR has an article on “The Other, Better Arizona” by Jeff Biggers

I’d love to read some good news, but I haven’t been able to find any. If you have any, feel free to post links in this thread.