Mall Shooter A Dropout With Criminal Past

A Bedouin rides a camel during the 10th Arabic Camel racing festival in al-Arish, Egypt, Aug. 29, 2006. / AFP/Getty Images

A high school dropout with a criminal past, Robert A. Hawkins had struggled to overcome depression. But friends thought he was making strides.

Then, about two weeks ago, he lost his girlfriend. A week later, it was his job. His friends worried he would regress.

CBS News correspondent Dean Reynolds reports that according to police, the 19-year-old left behind warning signs in text messages, telephone calls and notes to friends leading up to the bloodbath.

"We have confiscated the notes," said Omaha Police Chief Thomas Warren. "They do provide us with some indication that this incident was premeditated."

Reynolds reports that police say Hawkins went into an Omaha shopping mall twice on Wednesday - the first time possibly to check it out. The second time though, his intention was clearly to act as he stepped off the elevator on the third floor of the mall and began a shooting rampage that killed eight people.

Witnesses told CBS News the first volley was toward the children's clothing section, the second at people on an elevator from the second floor, and the last at the customer service area where shoppers and workers were shot at the counter where gifts were being wrapped. At least 30 rounds were fired.

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Audio Of Call To Omaha Police During Mall Shooting

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It ended when he turned his high-powered rifle on himself. The rampage was as troubling as it was puzzling for those who knew him.

"He came to us like a little lost puppy. He was always very sensitive and caring, always wanting to know how everybody was doing," Debora Maruca-Kovac, a surgical nurse whose family took in Hawkins after her 17- and 19-year-old sons befriended him, told CBS' The Early Show. "He just needed a chance to get on his feet."

"I was fearful that he was going to try to commit suicide," she told The Early Show. "But I had no idea that he would involve so many other families."

Maruca-Kovac added, "I feel so sorry for him, that he was so lost and alone that he had to resort to this."

Hawkins had been in trouble before. There was a felony drug conviction in March 2005 and the disorderly conduct charge seven months later. He was due in court later this month on charges he contributed to the delinquency of a minor.

But Maruca-Kovac said she saw nothing foreshadowing the horror Hawkins would inflict during his last moments alive. She remembered a gentle young man who loved animals. She regarded him so benignly that when he showed her an SKS semiautomatic rifle the night before his attack, she thought little of it, the Omaha World-Herald reported.

"He was a very helpful young man, but he was quiet," she said.

"He didn't cause a lot of trouble. He tried to help out all the time," Maruca-Kovac said. "He was very thankful for everything. He wasn't a violent person at all."

But she had a feeling of despair soon after she learned about Wednesday shootings. By then, she had learned of a suicide note that Hawkins had left behind.

"I had a feeling it could be him," she said.

She said she and her husband let Hawkins stay with them after he left or was kicked out of his family's house. Court records show that at least once he was termed a ward of the state, which legally removed him from his parents' custody.

With Hawkins living in her home, Maruca-Kovac could see he had a drinking problem and was an occasional marijuana smoker. He enjoyed music and video games - "normal teenager stuff," she said.

"He was depressed, and he had always been depressed," Maruca-Kovac said. "But he looked like he was getting better."

Hawkins had earned a GED after dropping out of Papillion-La Vista High School. He got a driver's license after moving in with the Maruca-Kovacs and five months ago started working at a McDonald's restaurant near their raised ranch-style home in a middle-class neighborhood in Bellevue, Maruca-Kovac said.

He was fired from that job this week, Maruca-Kovac said. Two employees of the McDonald's who were eating there Wednesday said they had been told not to talk to anyone about Hawkins.

Hawkins was not on any medication for mental illness, but he had been treated in the past for depression and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, Maruca-Kovac said.

Hawkins lived with several friends for a couple days at a time before landing at Maruca-Kovac's house last year, she said.

"He was like a lost pound puppy that nobody wanted," she said. "I felt sorry for him. I let him stay, and we tried to get him on his feet."

Maruca-Kovac, who works at Nebraska Medical Center, said she was getting ready for work Wednesday when Hawkins phoned her at about 1 p.m., telling her he had left a note. She tried to get him to explain.

"He said, 'It's too late,"' and hung up, she told CNN. She then called Hawkins' mother.

In the note, which was turned over to authorities, Hawkins wrote that he was "sorry for everything" and would not be a burden on his family anymore.

"Now I'll be famous," he wrote.

Maruca-Kovac went to the medical center, where victims of the shooting soon began to arrive.

[fie#]

Maybe I''m out of touch with social imagery in this society. The kid seems to have one image: compassionate, pot-smoking, self-destructive, dispirited. And he writes a sorry-sorry suicide note, before he goes off and kills a bunch of store employees who apparently don''t make the cut for him as humans. But he wants to be "famous". Does anyone remember the scene in War and Peace where the "loser" guy Peter Bezhukov decides he will kill Napoleon in Moscow in order to win the love of Natasha Rostov? He doesn''t actually have the nerve or the gun fails or something. Isn''t it a coincidence that Bush was in town only an hour before and a few minutes away from the mall? What if that was his first intended target? This would have, if successful, made him famous and put Cheney on the throne, and had he thought about it deeply, led to further war rather than to peace. Was that his original idea? Where was he during the day?

[fie#]

Okay - Here''s a woman who is providing a home for this kid who entered psychiatric treatment because of his threats to kill his stepmother. Here he is, with a long psychiatric history, and she says he shows her a weapon, an automatic weapon, and she just treats it like he is showing her a new video game or something. What kind of a fool is this woman?

[kailumego1]

Here lies a savage barbarian, a "monster" created by a society that forges a misanthropic "Social Darwinian" ideology, seen in constant others, and like them, has come back to bite them in the ***.

Not too long ago it was "Virginia Tech", Columbine, etc., etc. etc., etc., etc.

So what makes a person decide to take an AK-47, or any assault gun to a busy mall, school, restaurant, etc. and start killing innocent helpless people, because he is "fed up" with his life, or he''s depressed, etc.

Less apathetic people go to a quite place, write a lengthy suicide note, and blow their brains out, or take an overdose of pills, but not grandiose individuals.

No they live for the attention, the elaborate ostentatiousness, they hadn''t received from others, schoolmates, family, or society. Etc.

[kailumego1]

Now I ask you what kind of "monsters" is this society breeding that they have absolutely no regards for human life or respect for the life of others?

It''s nothing mall security, Columbine school, or any school, unless forewarned, Virginia Tech, etc. could have done to foresee this tragedy.

And those screaming if only some of the mall patrons had a gun, well this enraged individual had an AK-47, which he started randomly shooting people, like Columbine, Virginia, etc., no one could''ve seen this coming.

Look at the history of this country, one that is marred with imperialistic hegemony and a grandiose ideology that is responsible for the death of millions of Native Americans, Africans, Nicaraguans, Philippians, Vietnamese, Koreans, Iraqis, etc.

A country that surreptitiously endorses "illegal" wars, for profit, masqueraded as "peace missions" for democracy, and later marvels at the slaughter of thousands/millions of innocent civilians.

This is the country that has created the Columbine, Virginia Tech, Lundy, Post office, Omaha Mall massacres, because it%u2019s through this society''s socialization that these individuals are craftily created.

[toolmangler-2009]

When seconds count, the police are only minutes away!

Posted by gunownerdan at 12:35 AM : Dec 07, 2007


Good one..fives

[cigpig]

i too blame the unbalanced society,&the depresion drugs,but to blame the lady that tryed to help him is stupid.she is a working mother who i am sure had a full day on her own ,giving him a place to stay was way more than most posting here would ever do.i say check the Dr. records to see if he did addminister the meds right.or if he just wrote a perscription..and let it go at that..it was not the gun that did this.and them that say let him use a knife or stick..sure that sounds very good but what if mabey he has seen the news.where oppresed people with no guns fight back by using bottles of gas with a burning rag out the top..how many could he have died from that.mabey 1 or 2 mabey 30 or 60??so there is no side of the river to get on here.we are all in this together,attacking the rights of many will solve nothing.disarming a nation will only make us all victems.ok all you spell checker cops can jump all over my spelling now .i dont care about little things like that cause im sure they are all close enough for you to understand.but go ahead and blast me like i allways had done to me in school.yea i smoke too.so im sure my oppinion dont mean squat.but i freely give it to all..remember what i said about the bottle of gas and a burning rag!!!!please shoot me first.and GOD bless..~~CigPig~~

[fran12366]

My prayers go out to the victims family and friends of the shotting.As far as kids having guns i think you should have to prove that you r old and sane enought to caring one or have one in your home.With the red flags going up why didnt any on those people contact police.duhhhhhhhh RED FLAG mean anything.

[gunownerdan]

Most shopping malls and schools in America are "GUN FREE" zones.
It also seems like most mass shootings tend to happen in these places.
Killers prefer unarmed victims.
When a homicidal nutcase decides to murder innocent people, the only thing that can possibly stop them is a responsible armed citizen or security guard.
When seconds count, the police are only minutes away!
www.a-human-right.com

[hvipda]

Frack gun control. If some one in the mall had been armed maybe it would have ended with less loss of life... or maybe just the waste of space who was the shooter.. I feel bad for the families of those who lost people but not the shooters fam.. since the shooter is dead the only satisfaction the wronged have is knowing that the family of the one responsible will suffer by not only losing their son but knowing they should have seen it coming and tried to stop it.... and maybe the families of the shot can sue the shooters parents and financially ruin them as well... They will then feel so bad and become so depressed they will eat their own bullet and rid the world of this defficent family tree..

[baptox]

This person was severely mentally ill and should never have had access to a gun. The fact that he was able to "borrow" it from his stepfather is a red flag that our current gun laws are ineffective.

No one needs an AK47 for hunting or self protection. Anyone who keeps such a weapon is highly suspect. If the stepfather lent him this gun or left in unlocked, he should be charged with murder.

There has to be some accountablility for incidents like this and it begins and ends with the person who made the gun available to this deeply disturbed kid.