text: "This is a very difficult time for us. We ask the media to respect our privacy. There are no words that can possibly express how we feel. We wish that there were, so we could make you feel better. We don't understand why this happened. It may not make any difference, but we wish that we could change the heinous events of Saturday. We care very deeply about the victims and their families. We are so very sorry for their loss." ||||| TUCSON, Ariz.—The father of shooting suspect Jared Lee Loughner has prepared and may release a public statement, according to a neighbor who met with Mr. Loughner's parents Monday. 
   
   A neighbor of Randy and Amy Loughner, who have lived for decades in a ranch house north of Tuscon, Ariz., describes their devastation at learning that their son Jared had shot 20 people, killing six of them. WSJ's Charles Forelle reports. 
   
   Devlin Barrett reports on how federal investigators are working to make the case against accused shooter Jared Loughner in this weekend's massacre in Tucson. Plus, former House Majority Leader Tom Delay is sentenced to three years in prison. 
   
   Randy and Amy Loughner disappeared from view shortly after the shootings, and a statement would be the family's first public comments since the attack. 
   
   Even in normal times, many on his block describe the elder Mr. Loughner as a reclusive man who had little time for neighborhood niceties. 
   
   Few people besides law-enforcement officers have been spotted entering the family home. Neighbor Wayne Smith did so on Monday evening, after he said Mr. Loughner asked him to bring in the mail. 
   
   Mr. Smith emerged to tell a small group of reporters that Randy Loughner had written a statement but isn't sure when to release it. Mr. Loughner is reluctant to greet the public and will try to coordinate the release through the local sheriff's office, Mr. Smith said. 
   
   "They're hurting real bad," Mr. Smith said, outside the house, in a neighborhood north of Tucson amid a flat carpet of strip malls and low subdivisions. "They are devastated." 
   
   Officials say Mr. Loughner had psychological problems and plotted his attack, which killed six people, gravely wounded congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and injured 13 others. 
   
   Mr. Loughner's parents have been unreachable since. The parents told investigators they didn't realize the severity of their son's problems, say people familiar with the matter. 
   
   The Loughners' single-level ranch house stands out on the quiet and open block: its entire front is shrouded by shrubbery—a billowing mesquite, a cactus with droopy paddles and a stunted palm whose fronds shield a street-facing window. 
   
   "They liked their privacy," says George Gayan, a retired mechanic who has lived next door for three decades. Sometimes "I didn't see him for three or four days." 
   
   Mr. Smith, who is 70 and has lived in a house across the street since 1972, said he didn't know the couple's last name until after Saturday's rampage. And Mr. Loughner didn't know his, he said. Still, he said he was probably one of Randy Loughner's closest acquaintances in the neighborhood. 
   
   He said he believes Randy hasn't worked since Jared was born. Amy had a steady job and Randy raised Jared, he said. 
   
   Residents interviewed on the block said they barely knew the Loughners. Stephen Woods, who lives next door, had run-ins with Mr. Loughner over uncollected trash that he said were vituperative and hostile. 
   
   Once, Mr. Woods said, Mr. Loughner spotted him from a distance in a Wal-Mart parking lot and repeatedly shouted "Trash people!" 
   
   It was Mr. Smith who told the Loughners what had happened Saturday. They returned from shopping, grocery bags in their peeling white Chevy truck, to find sheriffs' cars parked in front of the house and deputies stringing up crime-scene tape. 
   
   Mr. Smith, who had seen the news on TV, walked up and told them their son was suspected in a mass shooting. 
   
   "She almost passed out right there," Mr. Smith said. "He sat in the road with the tape up and cried." 
   
   —Evan Perez contributed to this article. 
   
   Write to Charles Forelle at charles.forelle@wsj.com
target: – The parents of Jared Lee Loughner have released their first statement, and they sound as perplexed as the rest of us. "We don't understand why this happened," says the statement, via AP. "It may not make any difference, but we wish that we could change the heinous events of Saturday. We care very deeply about the victims and their families. We are so very sorry for their loss." Earlier, a neighbor described Amy and Randy Loughner as "hurting real bad," reports the Wall Street Journal. "They are devastated." The same neighbor—like others, he described the Loughner family as extremely private—was the first to break the news of their only child's arrest. He approached when they arrived home from shopping to see police cars and crime scene tape surrounding the house. "She almost passed out right there," said the neighbor. "He sat in the road with the tape up and cried."