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Depressed Man Kills 8, Self At Omaha Mall

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By ANNA JO BRATTON and OSKAR GARCIA, The Associated Press

Published: December 6, 2007

OMAHA, Neb. - A gunman in camouflage and wielding a rifle opened fire in an Omaha mall crowded with holiday shoppers Wednesday, killing eight people and wounding five others, before turning the gun on himself.

The gunman, identified by the authorities as Robert A. Hawkins, 20, and described by friends and relatives as a depressed person who had struggled to hold a job, left a note predicting, "Now I'll be famous."

Shoppers and store clerks described a surreal scene of panic and chaos after they heard shots ring out even as a pianist at the Westroads Mall played on.

Many witnesses, still in disbelief about what they had heard, dived into closets and storage rooms, crouched in dressing rooms, crowded behind desks and then began what became a long and terrifying wait, punctuated by more and more shots.

"All I could think was where is he, what if he comes through that door, what if he comes through right now," recalled Kevin Kleine, 29, a shopper who hid in a storage room with her daughter, Emily, 4, and four women she had never met. The group pushed every table, rack and garbage can they could find against the door and huddled behind clothes, making hushed calls to 911, to their husbands and to their parents.

Then began the long wait, 30 minutes, Kleine said, staring at that door.

Witnesses said the gunman fired down on shoppers from a third-floor balcony of the Von Maur department store.

Authorities gave no motive for the attack and said they did not know whether he said anything during the rampage.

Troubled Young Man

Hawkins had lived for more than a year with a friend's family in a house in a middle-class Bellevue neighborhood, said Debora Maruca-Kovac, a nurse who along with her husband took in Hawkins, a friend of her son's, after he left home.

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

She said Hawkins was fired from his job at a nearby McDonald's this week and had recently broken up with a girlfriend.

She said he phoned her about 1 p.m. on Wednesday, telling her that he had left a note for her in his bedroom. She tried to get him to explain, but he hung up, she said.

In the note, Hawkins wrote that he was "sorry for everything," would not be a burden on his family anymore and "now I'll be famous," she said. She took the note to authorities.

The Omaha World-Herald reported that the gunman had a black backpack, and wore a camouflage vest.

"Everybody was scared, and we didn't know what was going on," said Belene Esaw-Kagbara, 31, a Von Maur employee. "We didn't know what to do. I was praying that God protect us."

Some people told of horrific images.

A man talking on his cell phone and then falling to the floor. Someone shot in the back of the head, covered in blood. Someone shot on the second floor as he looked up an escalator.

Mickey Vickory, who worked at Von Maur's third-floor service department, said she heard shots at about 1:50 p.m.

She and her co-workers and customers went into a back closet behind the wrapping room to hide, then emerged about a half-hour later when police shouted to come out with their hands up. As police took them to another part of the mall for safety, they saw the victims.

"We saw the bodies and we saw the blood," she said.

Witnesses Hear 15 Shots

Witnesses said they heard at least 15 shots in all, maybe more. Scores of police officers swarmed to the mall six minutes after the first call, police officials said. They locked down the mall, surrounding it.

Police helicopters circled overhead as officers searched for the suspect.

Police went store to store, department to department, finding clusters of people and ushering them out - hands over their heads to show they were not the gunman - to safety outside.

There, some wept and clutched one another in the frozen air. Eventually, the police found the gunman's body.

Jeff Schaffart, shopping with his wife at the Von Maur store, didn't realize right away that the bangs he heard were gunshots.

Then he saw the blood streaming down his left arm.

"I could hear my wife, Carrie, yell, 'Get down! Get down!' but I didn't."

Schaffart, 34, an Omaha lawyer, and his wife were shopping for a dress for their 2-year-old daughter's visit to Santa.

A bullet had gone in and out of his upper arm and another shot had grazed the pinkie finger on his left hand. He used his necktie as a tourniquet for his arm wound and put napkins on his finger to stop the bleeding.

"I feel extremely fortunate to have made it through today," he said at a hospital. "My heart goes out to those who didn't."

Witness Shawn Vidlak said the shots sounded like a nail gun. At first he thought it was noise from construction work 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."

Nebraska Medical Center spokeswoman Andrea McMaster said it had three victims from the mall shooting, including a 61-year-old man in critical condition with a bullet wound to his chest.

The Von Maur store is part of a 22-store Midwestern chain. The sprawling, three-level mall has more than 135 stores and restaurants. It gets 14.5 million visitors every year, according to its Web site.

Information from The New York Times was used in this report.

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