Young Murderers

Robert Hawkins: Troubled Child

From ‘Troubled’ to ‘Killer,’ Despite Many Efforts
By ERIC KONIGSBERG
Published: December 8, 2007
Robert A. Hawkins made a five-year journey through a maze of juvenile services before killing eight people and himself in a mall.

Robert A. Hawkins, as a ward of the State of Nebraska, received extensive care at Cooper — private psychotherapy, family therapy, drug counseling — from 2003 to 2005...
“I’ve just snapped,” Mr. Hawkins wrote in one of two suicide notes the police released on Friday.
But his actions did not come without warning signs; nor were these signals ignored. The rampage appears to be not so much a case of a young man slipping through the cracks, as a tragedy in which measured vigilance ended up not being enough.

Memorial Fund for Victims of Shopping Mall Massacre

The Von Maur company, which operates stores across the Midwest, said it had established a memorial fund with the local United Way for the shooting victims and their families and invited public contributions. It also said it was helping families of the eight victims with funeral arrangements and grief counseling.

Police said Hawkins, 19, of nearby Bellevue, fired more than 30 rounds inside the crowded mall, striking 11 people. Six died where they fell, one died on the way to a hospital and another died despite 45 minutes of emergency treatment at another hospital.

Three other people were wounded, two seriously.

'I Just Want to Take A Few Pieces of (expletive) With Me"

OMAHA, Neb. - As police released surveillance images of a shaggy-haired, bespectacled Robert Hawkins taking aim at holiday shoppers, more details were revealed Friday about the teenager's suicide note, in which he wrote that he "just snapped."

“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,” he wrote. “I just want to take a few pieces of (expletive) with me.”

The 19-year-old gunman left the note at the suburban house where he lived Wednesday before going to Omaha’s Westroads Mall with an AK-47 and opening fire on the midday holiday shopping crowd, fatally shooting eight people at the Von Maur store before turning the gun on himself.

Associated Press

Young Murderers

MICHAEL ANDERSON, 24
ROBERT HAWKINS, 19

OMAHA, Neb. - The young man (Robert Hawkins) who killed eight people and committed suicide in a shooting rampage at a department store spent four years in a series of treatment centers, group homes and foster care after threatening to kill his stepmother in 2002.

Michael Anderson killed a young woman who answered an online advertisement for a babysitter. She was shot in the back by Anderson and a friend of his when she came for the interview.

Gunman Kills

OMAHA, Nebraska: A gunman wearing camouflage and wielding a rifle opened fire in a department store at a mall here crowded with holiday shoppers, killing eight people and wounding five, before turning the gun on himself.

The gunman, identified by the authorities as Robert Hawkins, who was 19 or 20, of nearby Bellevue, Nebraska, was described by friends as a depressed person who had lost his job at a McDonald's restaurant earlier Wednesday.