Jared Loughner's Ex: 'He's Faking Everything'
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Thanks for participating, Kelsey Hawkes, but another ex-girlfriend of Tucson shooter Jared Loughner, Ashley Figueroa, has emerged on television. Figueroa also dated Loughner in high school, and she brings the dirt: "I think he's faking everything."
Figueroa's recollections from high school are much darker than Hawkes', who said yesterday that Loughner and his family were nice, average people, and Loughner never showed a violent side.
"He used to scare me sometimes and that's kind of the reason why I left him," said Figueroa. "He kind of makes me feel uncomfortable at times. He'd get really mad and he would clench his fists really tight and kind of almost like have a little tantrum. He'd kind of like flail his arms and walk off."
Figueroa says the last time she saw Loughner was three or four months ago. She says she does not think he is mentally ill.
"I think he's faking everything. I think the outburst that he had in class — I think he's planned everything. I think that he has been planning this for some time," said Figueroa.
The working assumption on Loughner has been that he suffered from severe mental problems, perhaps paranoid schizophrenia, which would most aptly explain the delusional, personal grudge he kept against Rep. Gabrielle Giffords since meeting her three years ago. (It's worth noting that 99% of paranoid schizophrenics are harmless people who live difficult lives every day, by the way.)
But it's possible that he simply struggled with more typical depression and anxiety issues. We don't know yet. It's just more comforting to believe that he had some extremely rare, severe clinical mental disease, and that someone without that disease wouldn't be capable of doing what he did.