Omaha mall gunman left suicide note

OMAHA KILLING RAMPAGE

Omaha mall gunman left suicide note

A teenager who opened fire on a bustling Nebraska shopping mall with an assault rifle, killing eight and wounding five, left a suicide note predicting: "now I'll be famous," reported Telegraph online.

Omaha mall gunman left suicide note

Hawkins

Police found body after body in one department store, as shocked shoppers huddled outside

Robert Hawkins, a high school drop out who friends described as depressed, also wrote that he was "sorry for everything" and would no longer be a burden to his family.

He left the note at the home of the family he had been living with after reportedly being thrown out by his parents.

"He wanted to go out like a star," said Andrew Bigler, who described himself as a friend of Hawkins. "He had a rough life. He was a good guy. I loved him."

Early Thursday afternoon, Hawkins, 19, who had just been fired from his job at McDonald's for allegedly stealing 17 dollars, donned a camouflage vest and drove to the Westroads Shopping Mall in Omaha armed with a SKS assault rifle reportedly taken from his stepfather.

Once there amid the throngs of shoppers and festive musak, the bespectacled teenager made his way to the third floor of the Von Maur department store, pulled out the rifle and opened fire.

He gunned down shoppers in the store's customer service department before spraying bullets at others on a floor below as they looked up an escalator towards the screams and pandemonium.

He hit 13 people in the crowded complex, killing eight and injuring five before turning the gun on himself.

Police, who were on the scene in six minutes, found his body in the customer services department.

They said the shooting appeared to be "very random and without provocation".

Debora Maruca-Kovac, a nurse whose son was a friend of Hawkins, had taken him in at her and her husband's home in Quail Creek, Bellevue, a suburb of Omaha, over a year ago.

"When he first came in the house, he was introverted, a troubled young man who was like a lost pound puppy that nobody wanted," she said.

Mrs Maruca-Kovac said Hawkins had just been fired from his job at a McDonald's, apparently for stealing 17 dollars, and had recently broken up with a girlfriend.

In a phone call around 1pm on Wednesday, shortly before the shooting, he told her he had left a note for her in his bedroom.

He refused to explain further.

She told CNN the note said, "that he was sorry for everything, that he didn't want to be a burden to anybody, he loved his family, he loved all of his friends. He was a piece of shit all of his life and now he'll be famous."

"We tried to get him to come to the house, but he said it was too late," she told the New York Times. "When we heard about the shooting, I had a sick feeling about it."

Mrs Maruca-Kovac said Hawkins had obtained the gun on Tuesday night from his parents' house, saying he and friends were going target shooting on Wednesday. She described the youth as "very troubled".

The teenager had recently been arrested for underage possession of alcohol as well as two other minor offences and was due in court later this month.

//Telegraph online

The Nation