A teenager who wanted to die "famous" shot dead eight Christmas shoppers with an assault rifle at an Omaha shopping mall before killing himself.
Robert Hawkins, 19, left a suicide note in which he explained the latest shooting rampage to stun the US, police said, adding that two of the five people wounded in Wednesday's shooting were in critical condition.
Employees and shoppers fled the mall or locked themselves inside stores after hearing dozens of shots from the upscale Von Maur department store at the Westroads Mall.
Omaha Police Chief Thomas Warren said the shooting appeared to be "very random and without provocation."
He identified the shooter as Robert Hawkins, 19, and said he was armed with an SKS assault rifle.
"We believe there was one shooter and one shooter only," he said.
"We do have a [suicide] note. I can't describe the contents of this note, but it does appear this incident was premeditated," he said.
Hawkins' landlady, Debora Maruca Kovac, told CNN television that Hawkins' note said "that he was sorry for everything, that he didn't want to be a burden to anybody, he loved his family, he loved all of his friends. He was a piece of shit all of his life and now he'll be famous."
Kovac said that Hawkins had lived in her house for a year and a half and had recently broken up with his girlfriend.
"He was withdrawn," she said. "He was like a lost pound puppy that nobody wanted ... He had a lot of emotional problems," she said.
The Omaha World Herald newspaper reported that Hawkins had also been fired from his job at a McDonald's and was arrested on Friday for possessing alcohol while under the legal drinking age of 21.
The newspaper said he had been sent to jail for seven days in 2005 on charges of disorderly conduct.
The Sarpy County Sheriff's Department, located just south of Omaha in Papillion, told KETV television that Hawkins' mother walked into its office shortly after the shooting with a note that "could be interpreted as suicidal."
The sheriff's office and Omaha police could not be immediately reached for comment.
Employees and shoppers at the Mall panicked after hearing dozens of assault rifle shots boom around the mall.
"People were freaking," an employee at Whitehall jewelers who refused to give her name said by telephone.
Shoppers and employees described a terrifying scene.
"We heard about 35, 40 shots, and on our way we did see someone down by the escalator, bleeding," witness Jennifer Cramer told KETV.
"I was standing around getting ready to go back to work and all of a sudden I heard this bang, bang, bang -- it sounded like someone shooting fireworks," another witness told KETV. "I ran to get away from whatever was happening."
The Nebraska incident was the latest in a series of shootings in the US, where private gun ownership is legal and widespread.
Late last month, two people were found dead in an apparent murder-suicide at a Texas mall.
The woman was working at a store when she got a phone call from her angry boyfriend who threatened to harm her, local television station KHOU said.
The woman called mall security for help, but the boyfriend arrived before they did and took her hostage, pulling down the store's front gate and barricading them inside.
There have also been a series of school shootings this year, the worst being the Virginia Tech massacre in April in which 32 people were killed when a student went on a campus rampage.
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique