Nebraska mall killer had feelings of worthlessness

An undated photograph of Robert Hawkins from a high school yearbook.
Photograph: Reuters

US: A 19-year-old school dropout who shot and killed eight people and then himself at a Nebraska shopping mall smuggled a stolen assault rifle into the building wrapped in a sweatshirt and opened fire without warning when he got out of a third-floor elevator, police said yesterday.

Robert Hawkins left text and voice messages with friends and family before Wednesday's bloodbath. "He had apparently been experiencing some mental health problems, ideations of suicide," Omaha police chief Thomas Warren told a briefing.

His victims ranged in age from 24 to 66. They included two male customers and another man and four women who were employees of the Von Maur department store where most of the carnage occurred.

Mr Warren said Hawkins fired more than 30 rounds from the assault weapon.

"It appears that the shooting victims were randomly selected" with little if any words exchanged between the shooter and his victims, the chief said.

He killed one mall customer by shooting from the third to the second floor of an atrium, but the rest of the victims were mostly store employees in a customer service area.

Four other people were wounded, two of whom remain in critical condition, Mr Warren said.

The police chief said a review of security tapes and interviews revealed that unarmed mall police were aware that Hawkins had entered the Von Maur store on the second floor of the Westroads Mall. He quickly took a lift to the third floor and began firing when the lift door opened, he said.

Mr Warren said the tapes seemed to show that Hawkins had the gun wrapped in a hooded sweatshirt. He said the gun was stolen from the boy's stepfather. Investigators had not determined if the weapon's owner had acquired it legally, he said.

The Omaha World-Herald reported in yesterday's editions that Hawkins had recently lost both his job and his girlfriend and felt worthless.

"I'm a piece of s**t," said a suicide note he left behind, "but I'm going to be famous now," the newspaper said.

Hawkins had been living since last year with the family of a teenage friend whose mother said he had shown her family the rifle the night before the shootings. She thought it was too old to be functional.

The newspaper reported that Hawkins's parents divorced when he was three and he had spent time in foster care. He had also broken up with a girlfriend recently and was fired from a fast-food restaurant after being accused of stealing $17.

The friend's mother said he appeared to be trying to turn his life around. When she heard about the mall shooting, she told the newspaper: "I thought 'Oh, my God, I hope this is not Robbie'." It was then that she found the note he had left, which included a will.

"Our entire state is grieving," said Nebraska governor Dave Heineman. Local media said it was the worst single day of violence in the state's history.

It was the latest in a series of mass killings that have shocked the United States, where the right to possess arms is a fiercely contested constitutional issue currently on the agenda of the Supreme Court. -

© 2007 Reuters

This article appears in the print edition of the Irish Times