United Press International - An unhappy young man who opened fire in an Omaha mall, killing eight people and wounding five before killing himself, was described as a lost pound puppy.
Police said they found a suicide note on Robert A. Hawkins, age 19 or 20, of Bellevue, Neb., when they came upon his body at Westroads Mall, The New York Times reported. Hawkins, dressed in camouflage and armed with a rifle, apparently went to the mall after losing a job at a fast-food restaurant earlier in the day and his girlfriend not long before, the newspaper said.
Debora Kovac, whose family had taken in Hawkins, told the Times he was estranged from his family.
He was like a lost pound puppy, she said. Nobody wanted him.
She said he called her less than an hour before the shooting and apologized for the trouble he had caused.
We tried to get him to come to the house, but he said it was too late, Kovac told the Times.
The depressed youth filled the final minutes of his life with the sounds of gunfire and the screams of dozens of holiday shoppers who found themselves trapped in a nightmarish chaos scored by the tunes of a mall pianist who kept playing, the Times reported.
Police said they found a suicide note on Robert A. Hawkins, age 19 or 20, of Bellevue, Neb., when they came upon his body at Westroads Mall, The New York Times reported. Hawkins, dressed in camouflage and armed with a rifle, apparently went to the mall after losing a job at a fast-food restaurant earlier in the day and his girlfriend not long before, the newspaper said.
Debora Kovac, whose family had taken in Hawkins, told the Times he was estranged from his family.
He was like a lost pound puppy, she said. Nobody wanted him.
She said he called her less than an hour before the shooting and apologized for the trouble he had caused.
We tried to get him to come to the house, but he said it was too late, Kovac told the Times.
The depressed youth filled the final minutes of his life with the sounds of gunfire and the screams of dozens of holiday shoppers who found themselves trapped in a nightmarish chaos scored by the tunes of a mall pianist who kept playing, the Times reported.
