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Family, Friends Honor 4 Mall Shooting Victims

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By OSKAR GARCIA, The Associated Press

Published: December 10, 2007

OMAHA, Neb. - Janet Jorgensen had recently helped her husband of 50 years through a battle with prostate cancer. Dianne Trent liked to tend the flowers on her porch and chat with her neighbor over tea. And nearly 40 years after they went to high school with him, friends remember Gary Joy as a quiet and shy gentleman.

Relatives and friends began paying their final respects Sunday for the three Von Maur department store employees, who died after a gunman opened fire in Omaha's Westroads Mall. Visitations were held for the three, as well as for John McDonald, a shopper also among the eight killed by teenager Robert Hawkins.

Loved ones, who remembered Jorgensen as a pillar of the family, gathered at a funeral home about four miles from the store. The 67-year-old Omaha woman, a 14-year store employee, was remembered as dedicated to her grandchildren and neighborhood.

"Her personality was wonderful. She was very loving and kind, and was very family oriented," Jorgensen's niece, Karen Schaefer, said Sunday.

Jorgensen's survivors include her husband and 94-year-old mother, three children, and nine grandchildren, ages 7 to 28.

Cars overflowed from the parking lot of the funeral home, which was holding simultaneous visitations for Jorgensen and Trent 53, also shot while working at the store.

Trent divorced many years ago and had no children, neighbor Errol Schlenker said. She lived in a northwest Omaha town house with two cats and a small dog.

"A very incredibly sweet person," Schlenker had said last week. "She was a middle-of-the-road American, a dedicated worker. She was just a decent person who lived a good life here."

A few miles north, a steady stream of Joy's friends, co-workers and relatives crept across snowy sidewalks to the Kremer Funeral Home to pay their respects to the slain employee.

Von Maur family members and the ambulance crew who tried to revive Joy, 56, also attended. He was the first victim taken from the mall Wednesday, and hospital officials said he was dead on arrival.

"It's just such a tragedy," said Nancy Worm, a friend of Joy's mother.

Joy, who also had lived in Denver, was divorced and had no children. Survivors include his older brother, Jim, and his mother, Inez.

The families had requested no media at Sunday's visitations. Wakes and vigils were planned Sunday night in anticipation of funerals today. Services for other victims are to be held in the next few days.

About 250 parishioners filled pews in St. John's Parish at Creighton University Sunday morning, where McDonald's funeral is to be held today. Candles labeled with the victims' names burned on two altars at the front of the sanctuary, near the hospital where victims were taken.

McDonald, 65, was shot as he tried to hide behind a chair on Von Maur's third floor with his wife. He died before paramedics could reach him.

"What happened at the Westroads Mall last Wednesday happened to each and every one of us," the Rev. Bert Thelen said in his sermon. "That tragic sound of gunshots has echoed throughout the Omaha area, our country and even across the ocean."

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