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BY MAURICE SCARBOROUGH

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New details have emerged about accused gunman Jared Loughner, who opened fire on more than a dozen people, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, outside of a grocery store in Tucson, Arizona.

Portraits from neighbors, classmates and even teachers into the life of an individual who many describe as a quiet, sometimes frightening individual.

One of those portraits comes from former college classmate Lynda Sorenson - who told NBC she’d always thought Loughner was unstable. She shared emails she’d written while taking a class with Loughner on NBC’s Today Show.

“We have a mentally unstable person in the class that scares the living crap out of me. He is one of those whose picture you see on the news, after he has come into class with an automatic weapon. Everyone interviewed would say, yeah, he was in my math class and he was really weird. I sit by the door with my purse handy. If you see it on the news one night, know that I got out fast...”

Loughner’s neighbor Stephen Woods, who appeared on Fox News, describes the gunman as a quiet loner who often kept to himself.

“He never really wanted to look at you or greet you or anything like that. He was just a very much of a loner and just wanted to be by himself. He would walk up the street and wouldn’t look at anyone or even if he was driving down the road he wouldn’t look over at anyone. I think really he just wanted to be left alone.”

Loughner’s community college professor Ben McGahee (Mc-Gay-he), with whom the gunman had several confrontations, also spoke with Fox News about his former student.

“ I was very shocked by it, I wasn’t too surprised that it was Jared Loughner. I felt like he was planning something all along, I just didn’t know when he was going to do it and where he was going to do it.”

The state of Loughner’s mental health has been a major talking point. Many specialists argue Loughner could be suffering from severe mental problems such as schizophrenia, like Dr. Alan Lipman suggests on CNN.

“This was a kid who said, ‘I’m preoccupied with mind control, the government is listening to me.’ These are the classic delusions of persecution of schizophrenia. His friend Katelyn said that around the age of 19 there was a radical change in his behavior. He became oddly preoccupied with notions about prophecy, this is the pattern of a psychotic break.”

Among Laughner’s favorite books are Mein Kampf and the Communist Manifesto. The Daily Beast delves deeper into Loughner’s world, talking to the people who knew him.

“Jared Loughner was, by all accounts, an antisocial character whom most found odd and off-putting. Wearing a hoodie even in the scorching Tucson summer, and sealing the world out with his iPod earbuds, Jared would walk the family dog around the neighborhood, oblivious to those who tried to greet him.”

But a writer for Mother Jones talked with one of Loughner’s good friends, Bryce Tierney who paints a somewhat different picture from that portrayed in the media.

“...Loughner started to act strange around his junior or senior year of high school. Before that, Loughner was just a ‘normal kid,’ says Tierney.... ‘There was nothing really dark about Jared...He was playing drums, doing band things, playing sax. He was raised on writing and reading music.’”

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 killing a federal employee. If convicted Loughner could face the death penalty.

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