The Tucson gunman who killed six people and severely wounded Gabrielle Giffords has labelled himself a failure because the former Arizona congresswoman survived his rampage, according to a prison psychologist's report released Thursday.
The report comes two days after Jared Loughner, 23, in a deal that will spare him the death penalty, pleaded guilty to six murders and other charges stemming from his January 2011 shooting spree at a Tucson supermarket.
Psychologist Christina Pietz, who evaluated Loughner at a federal prison hospital in Missouri, said in the report that Loughner had repeatedly made comments suggesting he thought Giffords died when he shot her in the head.
At one time, he suggested he understood that Giffords was alive, according to Pietz, who wrote that she pressed him on that point, and he admitted to feeling disappointed in her survival because it meant he "failed."
"I'm not an assassin," Pietz's report quoted Loughner, a community college dropout, as saying.
Later on in the interview, he told Pietz: "Jared Loughner failed again. He's a failure. So all of this would be for nothing."
