Suspect Wanted To Be 'Heard'

After hours as a hostage in a suburban shopping mall, Jon Black saw the distraught young gunman toying with the clip of his assault rifle.

"I was thinking, OK, he's either flipped, or we're getting out of here," Black recalled Monday.

Then the gunman, with the look of "a scared kid," removed the clip and emptied the chamber. Black, 32, and another hostage stepped in to end the ordeal.

"He had tears in his eyes when we were taking the weapons away from him and he was in tears as we were taking him out," said Black, an active duty Army soldier.

It was the end of a shooting rampage that erupted Sunday afternoon during a busy shopping weekend at the Tacoma Mall, leaving six people wounded, one critically.

Dominick Sergio Maldonado, 20, of Tacoma, pleaded innocent Monday to charges of first-degree assault, kidnapping and unlawful firearm possession. He was ordered held on $2 million bail.

Police said they got a call just before the shootings erupted, with the caller saying he was armed with two assault weapons and was about to start firing. When the dispatcher asked the man where he was, he replied, "Just follow the screams," court documents said.

Maldonado told detectives he had been humiliated during a troubled childhood and that recent problems made him want to be "heard," according to the court papers. A text message to his ex-girlfriend minutes before the rampage said he was about to show the world his anger, the woman said.

Plans for making bombs and the poison ricin were later found in Maldonado's bedroom, prosecutors said.

The documents also said Maldonado denied intending to actually shoot anyone, but was trying to draw media attention. Deputy Prosecutor Phil Sorensen said he doubted that story.

"I'm surprised we're not looking at multiple fatalities," Sorensen said after Monday's hearing. "I don't believe he was trying to wing anybody."

Defense lawyer Sverre Staurset said he was eager to find out what drove Maldonado to go to the mall with guns.

"The thing to try to figure out here is, how does an otherwise attractive young man, 20 years old, end up on a Sunday in a mall with a gun? Something like this has got to have a genesis," Staurset said.

Police said Maldonado fired more than 20 shots. One of the six wounded remained in critical condition Monday, suffering paralysis and internal injuries, prosecutors said. The others had been released from hospitals.

Maldonado surrendered about four hours after ducking into a music store and taking four hostages, all of whom were released unharmed, authorities said.

One hostage, a boy about 10 years old, was released early in the standoff. Two music store employees, Joe Hudson and Katherine Riggans, and Black remained for hours, talking with Maldonado and attempting to get him to surrender.

Court papers said Hudson, who had served as an Army medic in Iraq, told police "that he was more frightened inside the store than he ever was in Iraq."

Tiffany Robison, 20, Maldonado's ex-girlfriend, told ABC's "Good Morning America" that he sent her a text message shortly before the shooting that said: "Today is the day that the world will know my anger."

Her mother, Mary Simon, 47, of Tacoma, said she was at home when her daughter got the troubling cell phone text message.

"When she got the message, she freaked out and took it very seriously," Simon told The Associated Press by telephone from her home Monday. "And then when she heard about the shooting, she knew in an instant that it was him."

Later, Robison got a call from Maldonado at the mall during the shooting spree and hostage standoff.

"He just said, 'Well, I just shot up the mall, and I'm busy now. I'm still in the Sam Goody,"' Simon said.

Of the couple's breakup, Simon said her daughter told her Maldonado had "made a lot of changes and said a lot of things that spooked her, and so she broke it off. He was reaching out for help and nobody was listening, was what she said."