Jared Loughner's mother has been in bed, crying nonstop since Saturday, neighbor Wayne Smith, 70, told KPHO-TV. Amy and Randy Loughner want to know where they went wrong with their 22-year-old son, who is charged with trying to kill U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and killing a federal judge.
"I told them they didn't fail. They taught him everything about right and wrong," Smith said. "We all know you can teach someone everything and have no control how it works out."
Roxanne Osler, of Tucson, whose son was a friend of Jared Loughner's, said he had a bad relationship with his parents and had distanced himself from family.
"What Jared did was wrong. But people need to know about him," she told The Washington Post. "I wish people would have taken a better notice of him and gotten him help. ... He had nobody, and that's not a nice place to be."
Loughner's parents have not spoken publicly, though Smith said the father plans to release a statement.
Wearing a beige prison jumpsuit and handcuffs and sporting a pink gash on the hairline of his shaved head, Loughner on Monday spoke just a brief reply when the judge asked if he understood that he could get life in prison — or the death penalty — for killing federal Judge John Roll.
"Yes," he said.
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A Mass for all the victims at St. Odelia's Parish in Tucson — was set for Tuesday evening, and President Barack Obama was scheduled to arrive in Arizona Wednesday for a memorial service days after calling the attack a tragedy for the entire country.
Loughner's court appearance in Phoenix on Monday gave the nation a first look at the man authorities say is responsible for the shooting that also left 14 injured outside a Tucson supermarket where Giffords had set up a booth to hear the concerns of constituents.
Giffords, a three-term Democrat, was in critical condition at Tucson's University Medical Center, gravely wounded after being shot through the head but able to give a thumbs-up sign that doctors found as a reason to hope.
Speaking to NBC's "Today" show early Tuesday, Dr. Michael Lemole, chief of neurosurgery at the University of Arizona, said there was no change overnight in Giffords' condition.
When asked about swelling in her brain on the third day, which is when brain swelling often reaches its peak after an injury, Lemole said a CAT scan early Tuesday showed no increase in swelling. But he cautioned that it can sometimes take longer for brain swelling to reach its peak.
"Just the fact that she's able to respond to those commands implies that there's not a great deal of pressure in the brain," he said.
After Saturday's operation to temporarily remove half of her skull, doctors over the past two days had Giffords removed from her sedation and then asked basic commands such as: "Show me two fingers."
"When she did that, we were having a party in there," said Dr. Peter Rhee, adding that Giffords has also been reaching for her breathing tube, even while sedated.
"That's a purposeful movement. That's a great thing. She's always grabbing for the tube," he said.
Giffords' family is by her side, receiving constant updates from doctors. On Monday, two well-known doctors with extensive experience in traumatic brain injury were traveling to Tucson to help consult on Giffords' case.
Her doctors have declined to speculate on what specific disabilities the 40-year-old congresswoman may face.
Two patients injured in the shooting were discharged from the Tucson hospital Sunday night. Seven others remained hospitalized.
Eric Fuller, one of the survivors, said Tuesday on the CBS "The Early Show" that he felt the bullet that hit his knee but didn't know he had also been hit in the back.
"Not wanting to leave the world very soon, and not thinking that I could do very much except maybe get killed trying to stop him from the vantage point that I was at, I fell to the ground, as other people were doing — and expected the worst to occur after that," he said.
With few new details emerging at Monday's hearing, questions remained about what could have motivated someone to arm himself with a pistol and magazines carrying 33 bullets each, and rain gunfire on a supermarket parking lot crowded with men, women and children.
A military official in Washington said the Army rejected Loughner in 2008 because he failed a drug test. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because privacy laws prevent the military from disclosing such information about an individual's application.
The official did not know what type of drug was detected.
Prosecutors say he scrawled on an envelope the words "my assassination" and "Giffords" sometime before he took a cab to the shopping center. Police said he bought the Glock pistol used in the attack at Sportsman's Warehouse in Tucson in November.
The revelation about the shooter's high-capacity magazines led one longtime Senate gun control advocate, Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., to announce plans to re-establish a prohibition that lapsed in 2004 on magazines that feed more than 10 rounds at a time.
At his appearance Monday in a Phoenix courtroom, about 100 miles away from where the shooting took place, Loughner seemed impassive and at one point stood at a lectern as a U.S. marshal stood guard nearby.
His newly appointed lawyer, Judy Clarke, who defended "Unabomber" Ted Kaczynski, stood beside him and whispered to him before the judge ordered him held without bail.
Loughner is charged with one count of attempted assassination of a member of Congress, two counts of killing an employee of the federal government and two counts of attempting to kill a federal employee. Those are federal charges.
State prosecutors, meanwhile, are researching whether they have to wait until after the federal case is resolved, or if they can proceed with local charges at the same time, an official said.
A moment of silence was held Monday evening at the BCS national championship between Oregon and Auburn in Glendale.
Associated Press writers Julie Pace in Washington, Marcia Dunn in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Paul Davenport, Jacques Billeaud and Julie Watson in Phoenix, and Terry Tang, Pauline Arrillaga and Alicia Chang in Tucson, Ariz., contributed to this report.
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