Tragic Mall Shooting

[MetDream]

Anyone see this tragic story that happened yesterday?

A man opened fire with a rifle at a busy department store Wednesday, killing eight people in an attack that made holiday shoppers run screaming through a mall and barricade themselves in dressing rooms.

The young shooter, who left a note predicting, "Now I'll be famous," wounded five others, two critically, then took his own life.
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Witnesses said the gunman sprayed fired down on shoppers from a third-floor balcony of the Von Maur store using what police said was an SKS assault rifle they found at the scene.

"My knees rocked. I didn't know what to do, so I just ran with everybody else," said Kevin Kleine, 29, who was shopping with her 4-year-old daughter at the Westroads Mall, in a prosperous neighborhood on the city's west side. She said she hid in a dressing room with four other shoppers and an employee.

Police found the first victim on the second floor, then several more near a customer service station on the third floor.

The shooter, identified by police as 19-year-old Robert A. Hawkins, was found dead on the third floor with a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Omaha Police Chief Thomas Warren said the shooting appeared to be random. He would not release the victims' identities and gave no motive for the attack.

Hawkins was kicked out by his family about a year ago and moved in with a friend's family in a house in a middle-class neighborhood in Bellevue, a suburb wedged between Offutt Air Force Base and the Missouri River, said Debora Maruca-Kovac, who along with her husband took in Hawkins, a friend of her sons.

"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 told The Associated Press.

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[slayerdiabolus]

I saw this on the BBC news site earlier. Its crazy, seriously crazy. If something like this happened in Ireland, it would be talked about for decades, yet these people will just become another statistic in American gun death figures.....

[dmegametal#1]

i saw this yesterday on CNN breaking news..scary shit when it's in a mall..then hearing it as a suicide afterwards!

[MetDream]

This is tragic in and of itself, the fact that it happened a couple weeks before Christmas just makes it so much more worse. The poor families of the victims. I feel so sad for them all.

[Doin]

Once again America's gun culture claims more victims.
The guy stole an AK-47 from his stepdad. Now, what the fuck is someone doing with an AK-47 assault rifle? In their home? If you're in the army and fighting a war it makes perfect sense.
No, or limited access to guns = less shooting rampages.
While Australia might hold claim to one of the worst shooting rampages in recent history (Port Arthur 1996) they are very few and far between.

What gets to me is that these people kill innocent people ,who were just going about their daily business, making them pay for the sins of others. They kill mothers, fathers, children. To prove what? And then they kill themselves leaving everyone else to deal with it and wonder why. If they were so upset and angry with the world, why not kill themselves in the first place if they are not going to live anyway to see the effect of their actions. While these are obviously the actions of a severely fucked up individual who had no self esteem and a hard life it is also representative of a society today in which people don't want to take responsibility for their actions. They're happy to commit the crime but not explain why they did it. And there are families who would be demanding an explanation....

[sorrowman]

@ Doin,

That's exactly what I've been thinking. All in all it's a matter of putting 1 and 1 together. Less guns = less shootings. How hard can that possibly be to understand. Unfortunately a substantial group of Americans just CAN'T seem to follow or perhaps don't WANT to follow that train of thought, even with incidents such as this happening over and over again. Sure, each country has their average fucked up minds running around with cruel intentions, and if a person really wants he get's his hands on a gun, even with the toughest of gun-control measures. But I'm just thinking that just about any person only has to open up the cubboard or dads closet to grab a shotgun has everything to do with things spinning out of control everytime in America.

[sindto]

This is some terrible shit. It have been a lot of similar shootings the last few years. Something is wrong.