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PHOENIX - Key information about Jared Lee Loughner's mental state - and the fact that no one did much to get him help - emerged as a key theme in roughly 2,700 pages of investigative papers released Wednesday.

Still, there was nothing to indicate exactly why he targeted former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in a deadly attack in 2011.

Almost everyone who crossed paths with Loughner in the year before he shot Giffords described a man who was becoming more unhinged and delusional by the day.

He got fired from a clothing store and thrown out of college, shaved his head and got tattoos of bullets on his shoulder. He showed up at the apartment of a friend with a Glock 9 mm pistol, saying he needed it for "home protection." He made dark comments about the government, and, according to one acquaintance, appeared suicidal.

Loughner's spiral into madness hit bottom on Jan. 8, 2011. He broke down in tears when a wildlife agent pulled him over for a traffic stop. He went to a gas station and asked the clerk to call a cab as he paced nervously around the store. Gazing up at the clock, he said, "Nine twenty-five. I still got time."

About 45 minutes later, Giffords lay bleeding on a Tucson sidewalk along with 11 others who were wounded. Six people were dead.

The files also provide the first glimpse into Loughner's family and a look at parents dealing with a son who had grown nearly impossible to communicate with.

"I tried to talk to him. But you can't," his father, Randy Loughner, told police. "Lost, lost and just didn't want to communicate with me no more."

His mother, Amy Loughner, according to documents included in the release, recalled hearing her son alone in his room "having conversations" as if someone else were there.

News organizations seeking the records were denied access in the months after the shooting and the arrest of Loughner, who was sentenced in November to seven consecutive life sentences, plus 140 years, after he pleaded guilty to 19 federal charges.

Last month, U.S. District Judge Larry Burns cleared the way for the release of the records after Star Publishing Co., which publishes the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson, joined by Phoenix Newspapers Inc., which publishes the Arizona Republic, and KPNX-TV, sought their release. The judge said Loughner's fair-trial rights were no longer on the line now that his criminal case has resolved.

Loughner's guilty plea enabled him to avoid the death penalty. He is serving his sentence at a federal prison medical facility in Springfield, Mo., where he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and forcibly given psychotropic drug treatments to make him fit for trial.