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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Nation in brief: Five men arrested in costly Malibu fire

The Spokesman-Review

Authorities arrested five men Thursday on allegations they caused a fire that destroyed more than 50 homes and caused over $100 million in losses in Malibu.

Investigators used surveillance video, receipts and food wrappers to track down the men who were believed to have been at the cave where the fire started, Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca said.

Baca identified the men as Brian Allen Anderson, 22; William Thomas Coppock, 23; Brian David Franks, 27; Eric Matthew Ullman, 18; and Dean Allen Lavorante, 19. All five were in custody Thursday evening.

Baca said the men, all from the Los Angeles area, were suspected of recklessly causing a fire with bodily injury, causing fire to an inhabited structure and arson during an emergency.

Omaha, Neb.

Mall shooter’s mother apologizes

The mother of the teenage gunman who killed eight people at a busy shopping mall last week apologized Thursday for her son’s crime and said she did her best raising him.

“I have been absolutely devastated,” Maribel Rodriguez told the Associated Press.

Her son, 19-year-old Robert Hawkins, fired more than 30 rounds inside a mall department store Dec. 5, striking 11 people. Eight of them died, and he killed himself.

Rodriguez said she is hurting more than the victims’ families, since she is grieving for so many people: the victims, their friends and the community.

“My pain is a billion times greater than any of them,” she said.

But, she added, she wishes more people had known her son. “You guys really were robbed,” she said. “That boy was oh-so-funny.”

Rodriguez had not had custody of Hawkins since she divorced his father about 15 years ago. When he was a teenager, there was one period when she did not have contact with him for more than two years.

“I’m not perfect, I know that,” she said Thursday in an interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “But you tell me: What could I have done differently? I did my best.”