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Gunman kills 8 in U.S. mall shooting

— Photo: AP

ORDEAL ENDS: Shoppers and employees leave the Von Maur store at the Westroads Mall after a gunman opened fire and killed eight persons in Omaha, Nebraska, U.S., on Wednesday.

OMAHA (Nebraska): A 19-year-old man killed eight persons and then himself with an assault rifle at a busy mall in Omaha on Wednesday, sending terrified workers and Christmas shoppers scrambling for cover. “Now I will be famous,” the gunman wrote in a suicide note, his landlady told CNN after finding a three-part document that she said included his will.

Police declined to discuss the contents of the note.

Five persons were wounded, two of them critically, in the early afternoon rampage in the midwestern U.S. city. Most of the victims at the upscale Westroads Mall were shot inside the Von Maur department store near the children’s clothing area. “It was horrible, just horrible,” one woman told local television station KETV, saying she hid under a rack of clothes when the gunfire started.

The Nebraska shooting was the latest in a series of mass killings that have shocked the United States, where gun ownership is widespread and the right to bear arms is a fiercely contested constitutional issue.

The White House said it was a “terrible tragedy.” “It’s hard to believe it would happen here,” said Jennifer Bettger, who left the mall just before the gunman opened fire. “It stops you in your tracks. We’re all asking why. Why here?”

Omaha police chief Thomas Warren identified the gunman as Robert Hawkins (19), from Bellevue, Nebraska, near Omaha. He was living with friends after going through a series of hard times, according to many who said they were close to Hawkins.

Mr. Warren said the dead were five females and three males but he would not specify whether any were children.

Robert Hawkins had a history of depression but seemed to be doing better since moving in with a friend’s family just over a year ago.

But about two weeks ago he broke up with his longtime girlfriend, and this week he was fired from his job at a fast-food restaurant, said a woman whose family took Hawkins in.

Surgical nurse Debora Maruca-Kovac’s family took in Hawkins after her 17- and 19-year-old sons befriended him. She told AP that she and her husband let Hawkins stay with them after he was kicked out of his family’s house but would not say why his family had kicked him out.

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

Hawkins earned a high school equivalency degree after dropping out of school. He was not on any medication for mental illness, but had been treated in the past for depression and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, she said. Though he had his troubles, Hawkins was gentle and loved animals, she said. But he also had a drinking problem and would occasionally smoke marijuana in his bedroom, 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.”

In the note, said Ms. Maruca-Kovac, Hawkins said “how sorry he was for everything.” He wrote that he loved his mom and dad and other family members and said he wasn’t “going to be a burden anymore.”

At the top of the note was his “will,” which said that his green Jeep Cherokee was to go to his mother, and that “my friends can have whatever they want.” He ended the note by saying that now he would be famous. - Agencies

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