RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events At Least One Shot at Busy Omaha Mall

At Least One Shot at Busy Omaha Mall

By OSKAR GARCIA, AP
15 minutes ago
OMAHA, Neb. —
At least one person was shot Wednesday at a busy Omaha mall, and police locked down the shopping center while they searched for a gunman. It was not immediately clear whether the shooter was still inside the mall or whether other people were wounded at the Westroads Mall.

Police refused to confirm any injuries or arrests.

A witness, Todd Trimpe, told Omaha television station KMTV that he saw police apprehend a man who was hiding under a bus stop bench outside the mall. Trimpe said the man was dressed in camouflage.

Keith Fidler, a Von Maur employee, said he heard a burst of five to six shots followed by 15 to 20 more shots. Fidler said he huddled in the corner of the men's clothing department with about a dozen other employees until police yelled to get out of the store.

Fidler said he did not see the shooting but saw a person lying still by an elevator as he was leaving the store.

A woman who answered the phone at an Old Navy store said 20 to 30 customers were huddled with employees in a back storeroom.

"All we know was people were running and screaming down the hallway by Von Maur saying there was a shooting, and then they locked us down," said the woman, who said her name was Heidi.

Police were allowing some people to leave the mall, but no one was permitted to enter.

Kevin Kleine, 29, who was shopping with her 4-year-old daughter, said she hid in a dressing room with four other shoppers and an employee.

"My knees rocked. I didn't know what to do, so I just ran with everybody else," Kleine said.

A witness, Shawn Vidlak, said he heard four or five rapid shots "like a nail gun." At first he thought it was noise from construction work going on at the mall.

"People started screaming about gunshots," Vidlak said. "I grabbed my wife and kids we got out of there as fast as we could."

President Bush was in town Wednesday for a fundraiser in Omaha, but left about an hour before the shooting.

Okay, now it is 9 dead confirmed...

I was at that Mall in Omaha back in Sept. 1998, when I visited a friend.

I was there twice during a two week visit.

Strange to see it again under these circumstances...

Mall Gunman Called Quiet and Depressed

By ERIC OLSON, AP
4 hours ago
BELLEVUE, Neb. —
A high school dropout with a criminal past, Robert A. Hawkins had struggled to overcome depression. But friends thought he was making strides.

Then, about two weeks ago, he lost his girlfriend. A week later, it was his job. His friends worried he would regress.

"He was a very helpful young man, but he was quiet," said Debora Maruca-Kovac, a surgical nurse whose family took in Hawkins after her 17- and 19-year-old sons befriended him.

"He didn't cause a lot of trouble. He tried to help out all the time," Maruca-Kovac said. "He was very thankful for everything. He wasn't a violent person at all."

But police said it was Hawkins who went into an Omaha shopping mall on Wednesday and began a shooting rampage that killed eight people. It ended when he turned his high-powered rifle on himself. The rampage was as troubling as it was puzzling for those who knew him.

Hawkins, 19, had been in trouble before. There was a felony drug conviction in March 2005 and the disorderly conduct charge seven months later. He was due in court later this month on charges he contributed to the delinquency of a minor.

But Maruca-Kovac said she saw nothing foreshadowing the horror Hawkins would inflict during his last moments alive. She remembered a gentle young man who loved animals. She regarded him so benignly that when he showed her an SKS semiautomatic rifle the night before his attack, she thought little of it, the Omaha World-Herald reported.

But she had a feeling of despair soon after she learned about Wednesday shootings. By then, she had learned of a suicide note that Hawkins had left behind.

"I had a feeling it could be him," she said.

She said she and her husband let Hawkins stay with them after he left or was kicked out of his family's house. Court records show that at least once he was termed a ward of the state, which legally removed him from his parents' custody.

With Hawkins living in her home, Maruca-Kovac could see he had a drinking problem and was an occasional marijuana smoker. He enjoyed music and video games _ "normal teenager stuff," she said.

"He was depressed, and he had always been depressed," Maruca-Kovac said. "But he looked like he was getting better."

Hawkins had earned a GED after dropping out of Papillion-La Vista High School. He got a driver's license after moving in with the Maruca-Kovacs and five months ago started working at a McDonald's restaurant near their raised ranch-style home in a middle-class neighborhood in Bellevue, Maruca-Kovac said.

He was fired from that job this week, Maruca-Kovac said. Two employees of the McDonald's who were eating there Wednesday said they had been told not to talk to anyone about Hawkins.

Hawkins was not on any medication for mental illness, but he had been treated in the past for depression and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, Maruca-Kovac said.

Hawkins lived with several friends for a couple days at a time before landing at Maruca-Kovac's house last year, she said.

"He was like a lost pound puppy that nobody wanted," she said. "I felt sorry for him. I let him stay, and we tried to get him on his feet."

Maruca-Kovac, who works at Nebraska Medical Center, said she was getting ready for work Wednesday when Hawkins phoned her at about 1 p.m., telling her he had left a note. She tried to get him to explain.

"He said, 'It's too late,'" and hung up, she told CNN. She then called Hawkins' mother.

In the note, which was turned over to authorities, Hawkins wrote that he was "sorry for everything" and would not be a burden on his family anymore.

"Now I'll be famous," he wrote.

Maruca-Kovac went to the medical center, where victims of the shooting soon began to arrive.

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Yeah, now he's famous!

He ruined the lives of all the people who were related to or friends with the victims he killed.

It's the ones left behind who suffer when a loved one is taken from them.

( The ones who died are in the next life, and hopefully happy now. )

And it was sudden and senseless. No time for any goodbyes.

I guess he'll be roommates in hell with Cho, who killed 33 people at Virginia Tech earlier this year.....

How do clearly disturbed people like this continue to fall thru the cracks and periodically show up to murder complete strangers at random?

We just had that Clinton campaign HQ guy and now this?

I saw a picture of this loser on the news today. He was an emo. Even more reason to lock them all up in camps.

This is how you bsams. Pay attention whomod.