Mall reopens after shooting
OMAHA, Neb. – People returned to the Westroads Mall on Saturday, most to shop for the holidays but some to grieve in the place where a young gunman killed eight people and himself three days earlier.
Within the mall, however, the Von Maur department store where 19-year-old Robert Hawkins fired an AK-47 on Wednesday remained closed.
A makeshift memorial had been assembled at its inside entrance. Wreaths sat on tripods just outside the doors and a note from management said the store will reopen soon. No date was given.
“I come out here almost every morning, and (today) it was kind of just an eerie feeling of, I don’t know, quiet,” said Marge Andrews, 49, who regularly walks the mall with a friend. She and her husband John, 51, came Saturday to buy Christmas presents – sporting goods for their sons, volleyball clothes for their daughter.
“It doesn’t feel like a Christmas feeling,” John Andrews said.
A few police cars were visible in the parking lot. Police acknowledged there was extra security in the area but said they couldn’t discuss specifics. Normal mall security guards were unarmed.
Hawkins’ family released a statement in which they said they hope the community can heal.
“The Hawkins family extends its sincerest condolences to all those impacted by this senseless and horrible event,” the statement read. “While no words can ease the pain and grief, our family prays that at some time, in some way, our community can be healed in the aftermath of this terrible tragedy.”
Prosecutors say Hawkins had been allowed to walk away from state-mandated care in the summer of 2006 – after four years of treatment and counseling, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars – but not because he was prepared to face society on his own.
“There was really nothing more that we could offer him that he was willing to participate in,” said Sandra Markley, Sarpy County’s lead juvenile prosecutor.
Hawkins became a ward of the state through Sarpy County Juvenile Court in 2002, after a stay in a Missouri treatment facility for threatening to kill his stepmother.