TUCSON, Ariz. – For accused gunman Jared Loughner, the morning of the deadly shooting rampage was a blur of activity.

He hustled to Walmart twice. He ran a red light, with the officer letting him go with a warning. Back home, he grabbed a black bag from the trunk of a family car and fled into the desert on foot, his suspicious father giving chase.

Later, Loughner took a cab to a Safeway supermarket and began squeezing off round after round into the crowd.

The new details of the Walmart visits and the traffic stop emerged Wednesday, adding to the picture of the last frenetic hours the 22-year-old spent before the attack Saturday that gravely wounded his apparent target, U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, and killed six others.

“It sounds like he was pretty busy that morning,” Pima County sheriff’s Capt. Chris Nanos said.

Nanos said Loughner made some purchases during his two stops at Walmart. He declined to specify what Loughner bought.

An officer with the Arizona Game and Fish Department saw Loughner run a red light on a road that runs parallel to Interstate 10 at about 7:30 a.m. and pulled over his 1960s dark gray Chevy Nova, authorities said.

The stop was about six miles from the Safeway store, agency spokesman Tom Cadden said.

Wildlife officers don’t usually make traffic stops unless public safety is at risk, such as running a red light. The officer took Loughner’s driver’s license and vehicle registration information but found no outstanding warrants and let him go.

“All he saw were some fast-food wrappers, no black bag,” Cadden said. “The officer said he was polite and subdued.”

Loughner had a valid license and insurance and the car was registered, agency spokesman Jim Paxon said. “He was warned and released because we had no probable cause to hold, or do an extensive search.”

Sometime later, Loughner was back at his house on a block of low-slung homes with palm trees and cactus gardens.

Loughner removed a black bag from trunk of a family car. His father, Randy, saw him and asked him what he was doing, said Rick Kastigar, chief of the sheriff’s department’s investigations bureau.

Loughner then ran off into the nearby desert, only to emerge later from a cab at the Safeway supermarket where Giffords was holding an event to listen to constituents’ concerns, authorities said.

Investigators are still searching for the black bag.

“What he did (during) the morning before the shooting, we’re just trying to find all that out. Naturally, we want to find every detail we can,” Nanos said, adding that Loughner may have made other stops that morning but could not specify what they were.

Later Wednesday, authorities released reports of the sheriff’s department’s previous run-ins with the family.

The reports detailed nine contacts officers had with Loughner or one of his parents from May 1994 to March 2010. The first with Loughner came in September 2004, when he reported that a fellow student pricked him with a needle.

In May 2006, police arrested Loughner on a misdemeanor charge of being a minor in possession of alcohol. He was taken from his high school to a hospital because he was drunk after consuming vodka that he had taken from his father’s liquor cabinet.

“He advised he drank the alcohol because he was very upset as his father yelled at him,” the report said. “I could see his eyes were very red and he was crying.”

In September 2007, Loughner was cited on a misdemeanor charge of drug possession after officers found two marijuana pipes, a marijuana cigarette butt and rolling papers in a van he was in with another teenage boy.