In death, a portrait emerged of the Jacksonville mosque firebombing suspect as a man increasingly paranoid of capture, dependent on a battery of powerful pain medications and hostile toward Muslims.

The yearlong hunt for the man suspected of trying to blow up the Islamic Center ended Wednesday 1,200 miles way with gunfire, a dead body and a searing picture of enmity gone too far.

FBI agents and Oklahoma Highway Patrol officers followed a tip to a flat, scrubby field outside Fairview, Okla., where they found Sandlin Matthews Smith and his black Toyota Tundra. Smith, 46, was shot and killed after he brandished a weapon, said James Casey, special agent in charge of the FBI's Jacksonville field office.

Read the affidavit either below the story or here

Smith was alone, and no authorities were injured in the shooting.

The pickup truck in Oklahoma was the same vehicle that appeared in a surveillance video taken outside the Islamic Center of Northeast Florida shortly before and after the May 2010 bombing, Casey said. The FBI publicly released a grainy video at the time of a man carrying a pipe and gas tank to the back of the mosque, but the video of the pickup remained secret - until Wednesday.

Why it was kept from view: For one, investigators weren't entirely sure that the Tundra was involved in the bombing, which caused no injuries. Moreover, keeping the video secret would help lend credence to any witness who happened to mention the truck, Casey said.

FBI documents show the investigation took its final turn a week ago Thursday with a phone call from an acquaintance of Smith's.

The man, whose name is redacted in FBI reports, told investigators that Smith had visited the man's wife in Georgia on April 22 while he was out of town. Smith's behavior was erratic. He held a gun to the woman's head. After another person intervened, he put down the gun and began crying. He told them that he had bombed a mosque and that the "feds" were after him.

Smith lived in the 1200 block of Lake Parke Drive in St. Johns County, near the Duval County line, until this spring. His marriage falling apart, he moved into a house in the 6100 block of Race Track Road.

St. Johns and Duval court records showed no felony arrests under his name. But his life had been going downhill since November 2009, his wife told authorities. Smith, known to his friends as "Sandy," was climbing a tree when he fell and broke both his legs; afterward he began taking methadone and "numerous" other medications for the pain.

After the April 28 phone call, investigators contacted others in Smith's circle. One said Smith told her that he bombed the mosque because "he was angry about our men going overseas, fighting and dying," according to FBI reports. Further, he "wanted to make a statement and show Muslims that they were vulnerable too."

By the end of the weekend, the FBI had enough information to request and get an arrest warrant.

Smith was charged with damaging of religious property, obstruction of persons in free exercise of religious beliefs, possession and transfer of a destructive device, possession of an unregistered firearm and unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. He was not the same man in another surveillance video taken a month earlier at the mosque of a man who disrupted services, authorities say.

Smith was on the run, having left St. Johns over the weekend. Authorities aren't sure why he stopped at Glass Mountain State Park in Oklahoma. After a delay to make sure they had found their man, the team closed in on Smith at 1:30 p.m. local time (2:30 p.m. EST).

The news was met with relief by one of Jacksonville's top Muslim figures.

"We are regretful that there was a loss of life, but relieved that the issue has come to a close," said Joe Bradford, imam of the Islamic Center of Northeast Florida.

Times-Union writer Dan Scanlan contributed to this report.

jeremy.cox@jacksonville.com, (904) 359-4083

Affidavit from the FBI in 2010 mosque bombing