An unhappy young man who shot and killed eight people at an Omaha mall left a suicide note predicting he would now be famous.

Five other people were wounded, two of them critically, in Wednesday's shooting spree at the Westroads Mall, CNN reported.

Police identified the shooter as Robert Hawkins, 19, of Bellevue, Neb., The New York Times reported.

Hawkins, dressed in camouflage and armed with a rifle, apparently went to the mall after losing a job at a fast-food restaurant earlier in the day and his girlfriend not long before, the newspaper said.

Debora Kovac, whose family had taken in Hawkins, told the Times he was estranged from his family.

"He was like a lost pound puppy," she said. "Nobody wanted him."

She said he called her less than an hour before the shooting and apologized for the trouble he had caused.

"We tried to get him to come to the house, but he said it was too late," Kovac told the Times.

She said he had left a suicide note in his room that concluded: "Now I'll be famous," CNN reported.  // Copyright 2007 by United Press International



Publication date: 06 December 2007   

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