Speaking of Guns

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.