James Fuller, who was injured in Arizona shooting spree, shouted 'You're dead' at Tea Party co-founder Trent Humphries
- guardian.co.uk,
- Article history
One of the victims of the Arizona shootings was arrested over the weekend after threatening a Tea Party leader during a televised town hall meeting.
James Fuller, who was shot in the knee and back by Jared Loughner, shouted: "You're dead" at Tucson Tea Party co-founder Trent Humphries before being detained and taken to hospital for a mental health evaluation.
Fuller has campaigned in the past for congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who remains in hospital after being shot in the head at point-blank range but was yesterday taken off a ventilator. Doctors upgraded her condition from critical to serious. Her husband, astronaut Mark Kelly, spoke publicly for the first time, saying his wife was "improving a little bit each day. She's a fighter."
Fuller, 63, reportedly became upset when Humphries suggested that any conversation about gun control should be delayed until all the dead were buried. Brandishing a picture of Humphries, he shouted: "You're dead" before calling others gathered in the church a bunch of "whores", authorities said. Deputies called a doctor and decided Fuller should be taken to a hospital for a mental evaluation, Pima county sheriff's spokesman, Jason Ogan, said.
A number of shooting victims and heroes had been invited to the event, including Fuller, a Vietnam veteran. After he was shot he drove to the hospital, where he spent two days.
In an interview with Democracy Now on Friday, he added his voice to others blaming rightwingers for fostering a climate of hate in the runup to the shootings. "It looks like [Sarah] Palin, [Glenn] Beck, Sharron Angle and the rest got their first target," he said. Humphries said he wondered whether Fuller was "crazy or is he the canary in a coal mine? Is he saying what a lot of other people are holding in their hearts? If so, that's a problem."
Doctors decided to upgrade Giffords's condition because a tracheotomy carried out a day earlier was uneventful, hospital spokeswoman Katie Riley said. A feeding tube was also put in on Saturday and doctors speculated they might soon know if she would be able to speak.
Giffords's husband spoke at a memorial service for Gabriel Zimmerman, an aide of Giffords, who was killed in the shooting rampage in Tucson. Kelly said of his wife: "I know someday she'll get to tell you how she felt about Gabe herself." He said she loved Zimmerman "like a younger brother" and was inspired by "his idealism, his strength and his warmth".
Federal authorities plan to move Loughner's trial to California, the Washington Post reported yesterday. The paper cited the level of pretrial publicity and also the sensitivity of holding the case in Arizona, given that one of those killed was John Roll, the state's chief federal judge.
Loughner is being held at a medium-security prison in Phoenix where he is in segregation, an official told Associated Press. Prisoners in segregation are closely monitored, the official said, and generally spend 23 hours of the day alone in their cell with an hour or so a day for exercise and showering.
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