Armed Youth Was Hoping for ‘Suicide by Cop’

SAN DIEGO —  Jason Hoffman said that he had stopped taking his antidepressant medication for six months before shooting five people at a high school and that he had hoped to commit “suicide by cop,” according to a probation report issued Tuesday.

Hoffman, 18, committed suicide in his jail cell Monday, days before he was to be sentenced to 27 years to life in prison after pleading guilty to the March 22 shootings at Granite Hills High School in El Cajon.

Interviewed by a probation officer Oct. 16, Hoffman offered an apology but no motive for the shootings.

“My heart goes out to the victims” he said. “I want people to know that what happened was not the real me. I was just angry, maybe my medication. It was a fluke of the moment. The person was not the true Jason Hoffman.”

He said he felt worthless: “No matter what I do, I can never manage to succeed at anything. No matter how much I work and study, I will never be able to attain the position in life I want to.”

In a letter to the probation department, Hoffman’s mother, Denise Marquez, said he became withdrawn and visibly reclusive after his only friend moved away. He failed at a job at McDonald’s because he could not work the cash register.

In a plea that Hoffman be sent to a mental hospital rather than prison, Marquez called her son “a struggling teenager who was unable to identify his problematic emotional state and his subsequent erratic behavior.” His medication, she said, gave him headaches, made him dizzy and impaired his ability to concentrate.

The teenager said he never wanted to kill anyone during the rampage, in which he fired at fleeing students and teachers with a shotgun before being shot in the face and arrested by an El Cajon police officer. All five of the wounded recovered.

Hoffman fired twice at the school vice principal but missed. “I don’t think he treated me fairly in the past but I had never thought about killing him,” he said.

Hoffman said he became disappointed after doing badly on a mathematics test at Cuyamaca Community College and being rejected by the Navy: “I got to thinking: What the hell is the point of life? It was like I dove off a cliff.”

Hoffman was a senior at Granite Hills High and was taking a course at the community college. He suffered from attention-deficit disorder and clinical depression, the report said.

The report indicated that Hoffman, who had not seen his father for three years, had been convicted in Juvenile Court in 1999 of assaulting another teenager with a racquetball racquet, allegedly after the victim had teased him.

“When he takes [his prescriptions], I really see a different kid. He is so much more open, positive, happy,” Marquez wrote. “Despite what my son did he is a good kid.”

In his interview, Hoffman did not mention any further thoughts about suicide. “When I get to prison, I would like to work and get my [high school diploma],” he said.

Suicidal thoughts are common among teenagers diagnosed as clinically depressed. For several weeks Hoffman was kept in a padded suicide watch cell but was moved to a less restrictive cell a month ago after being cleared by a jail psychiatrist.

The county Sheriff’s Department, which runs the jail system, provides psychiatric assistance and medication to inmates, according to Bill Sparrow, who runs the medical services program.

But state law allows inmates to refuse to take medication. “We abide by the law,” Sparrow said.

Whether Hoffman was taking his antidepressant medication while in jail has not been revealed. He left a note containing profanity and feelings of despair and anger.