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'I'm gonna be famous'
08/12/2007 07:26 - (SA)
Omaha, Nebraska - The gunman who killed eight people in a mall shooting "just snapped," he said in a hand-scrawled suicide note released on Friday that combines love for his friends and family with nothing but contempt for his random victims.
"I know everyone will remember me as some sort of monster but please understand that I just don't want to be a burden on the ones that I care for my entire life," 19-year-old Robert Hawkins wrote. "I just want to take a few pieces of (expletive) with me."
Police released the three-page note on Friday.
Hawkins left the note at the Bellevue house where he lived before going to Omaha's Westroads Mall on Wednesday with an AK-47. He opened fire randomly in the Von Maur store, fatally wounding eight people before taking his own life.
He apologised to his friends on one page of the note, saying, "I've been a piece of (expletive) my entire life it seems this is my only option."
He said his friends would be better off without him, and told them to remember the good times they had.
"Just think tho I'm gonna be (expletive) famous," he wrote.
Apologetic
He was more apologetic on another page, addressed to his family.
"I'm so sorry for what I've put you through I never meant to hurt all of you so much and I don't blame any one of you for disowning me," he wrote.
"I've just snapped I can't take this meaningless existence anymore I've been a constant disappointment and that trend would have only continued."
He added, "I love you mommy. I love you dad," and expressed love for several other people.
Another page was his will: "I'm giving my car back to my mom and my friends can have whatever else I leave behind."
Surveillance images
Police released three surveillance images from the shooting Friday. The images at first show Hawkins walking into the mall unarmed, wearing glasses, a black zippered sweat shirt over a black T-shirt with a white logo.
Six minutes later, he returns and strides through an entrance decked with holiday decorations, an apparent bulge under his clothing. In the last image, he is shown with his sleeves rolled up, aiming the AK-47 to fire.
The images appear to contradict earlier reports that the gunman had a military-style haircut and entered the mall wearing a camouflage vest.
Moments after Hawkins entered the mall, authorities would be flooded with emergency calls about the gunfire. One was from Jodi Longmeyer, a human resources manager at Von Maur, agonised with the operator while barricaded in an employee locker room at the store.
She saw Hawkins step off the mall elevator on the third floor. He was dressed in dark clothes. She saw his gun, watched him open fire. Minutes later, shaking and scared, Longmeyer was able to get into a security room, where she described what she could see on live surveillance of the department store.
"Oh my gosh," she told the dispatcher. "It looks like the gun is lying over by customer service. It looks like he might have killed himself," Longmeyer said, her voice rising as she started to sob.
The shoppers killed were identified as Gary Scharf, 48, of Lincoln, and John McDonald, 65, of Council Bluffs, Iowa. The six employees killed were Angie Schuster, 36; Maggie Webb, 24; Janet Jorgensen, 67; Dianne Trent, 53; Gary Joy, 56; and Beverly Flynn, 47, all of Omaha.
- AP
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