Pentagon Shooter a 'Brilliant' Engineering Student

John Patrick Bedell, who allegedly opened fire on the Pentagon last night before being shot and killed, was a “brilliant” engineering student with a “severe pot addiction,” according to a family friend. His mother “asked me to help,” says the former teacher. But “there was denial on Patrick’s part,” and because he was 36, relatives and friends couldn't do much.

Bedell was a postgraduate student at San Jose State University focusing in circuit design. A professor tells the San Jose Mercury News he was both extremely intelligent and so helpful to his fellow students that he was “almost an unofficial teaching assistant. I still can’t believe this is the JP I knew. It’s as though someone stole his identity.” (More John Patrick Bedell stories.)