OMAHA, Dec. 6 —A video surveillance camera at the Westroads Mall here showed that Robert Hawkins entered the main entrance of the Von Maur department store Wednesday afternoon, looked around briefly and then left, before entering the store again six minutes later, carrying what was later learned to be a rifle.

“He appeared to be concealing something balled up in a hooded sweatshirt,” Police Chief Thomas Warren said at a televised news conference.

Mr. Hawkins then took an elevator to the store’s third floor, “and upon exiting the elevator, he immediately started firing shots.”

A few terrifying minutes later — which seemed endless to those who lived through it — eight people were left dead in the crowd of panicked holiday shoppers and employees, and Mr. Hawkins had turned the weapon on himself, dying almost instantly.

At the news conference, the chief was joined by the governor of Nebraska, Dave Heineman, and the mayor of Omaha, Mike Fahey, and together they provided a more detailed chronology of what took place inside the Von Maur store during the time it took Mr. Hawkins to carry out the horrific acts that have stunned this city. They also provided more details about Mr. Hawkins’ troubled life, and identified the eight people he killed.

“These were innocent people going about their daily lives, performing their jobs and shopping for the holiday,” the mayor said. “They were men and women who did not deserve the fate that they were given.

“This was an ugly act of cowardice.”

They eight victims included five women and three men, ranging in age from 24 to 66. Six of the victims were employees of the store, the chief said, and two were customers.

The shopping mall remained closed off as a crime scene today, and is not scheduled to re-open until Friday. The authorities do not know yet why Mr. Hawkins chose the Westroads Mall, on Omaha’s west side, or what demons he was battling when he wrote in a note to friends, in a haunting foreshadowing of what he was about to do: “Now I’ll be famous.”

“The shooting victims were randomly selected,” the chief said. Mr. Hawkins’s motives are not completely understood yet, the chief said, but he appeared determined to harm as many people as possible.

“We have not been able to determine why he chose that location, other than the fact that it was a very busy mall, a public place, “ the chief said. “Obviously we’re in the midst of a very busy shopping season. If you were looking to engage in mass casualty type of incident, you would choose a public place “ The governor said that Mr. Hawkins had been a ward of the state from 2002 to 2006 and had previous run-ins with the law, but had not been associated with violence.

Later in the day, Todd Landry, director of the state’s department of Children and Family Services, said that the state provided Mr. Hawkins with stays at residential centers and in-patient facilities and also at a hospital. The facilities provided him with addiction counseling, mental-health counseling and behavioral counseling, among other services, but he said federal and state privacy laws prevented him from being more specific about Mr. Hawkins’ problems.

Mr. Landry said in a news conference that one of the treatment periods came after Mr. Hawkins had threatened to kill his stepmother.

Court records showed that Mr. Hawkins had a felony drug conviction and that several misdemeanor charges had been filed against him, The Associated Press reported. Most recently, he had been charged with having alcohol as a minor, and he was due to appear in court in two weeks.

For the last year, Mr. Hawkins had been living with Debora Maruca-Kovac, whose son was a friend of his. It was Ms. Maruca-Kovac who shared with the authorities a note that Mr. Hawkins’s left her family.

“He basically said how sorry he was for everything,” she told CNN about the note. “He didn’t want to be a burden to people.”



I just took this article from the New York Times. I just wanted to make comments about the entire situation. I cannot believe that this is happening again. It seems like this is becoming a popular act amongst troubled teens on the edge of commiting suicide. That is, to take others lives before they take their own. It makes me sick when I hear stories like this on the news. It is so sad that someone is so miserable with their life that they murder others. These people were complete strangers. What motives were behind his shooting? It is obvious that he was a troubled teen and someone should of known that his behavior would lead to something serious.