High school drop-out kills eight in US mall shooting

A 19-year-old high school drop-out opened fire with a rifle at a shopping mall in Omaha, Nebraska, yesterday, killing eight people and injuring at least five others before turning his weapon on himself.

America's latest mass shooting triggered panic among hundreds of shoppers out buying presents for the holidays. And it rocked a city which is a virtual byword for the heartland friendly, overweight, and heavily suburbanised.

The killer, identified as Robert Hawkins, marched into the Von Maur department store at the Westroads mall just after lunch and created mayhem on the second and third floors.

Shoppers barricaded themselves in dressing rooms for safety. One group of employees and customers huddled down in a cupboard behind the gift-wrapping room.

Hawkins, dressed in camouflage gear, worked his way up to the third floor, began shooting down from a balcony into the shopping mall, then took his own life by turning the weapon on himself, according to police who rushed to the scene.

Someone called the emergency number 911, but by the time police arrived on the scene six minutes later it was all over. Eyewitnesses said Hawkins fired an initial volley of five or six shots, followed by 15-20 more rounds.

One eyewitness, Shawn Vidlak, told the Associated Press that the shots initially sounded like a nail gun. He assumed it came from construction work going on in the building.

Then, he said: "People started screaming about gunshots. I grabbed my wife and kids and we got out of there as fast as we could."

Within half-an-hour, a woman came forward with a note she said she had found it was not immediately clear where she had picked it up from.

Police said the note "could be interpreted as suicidal". One local television station reported that the note announced Hawkins' intention to "go out in style".

Little was immediately known about the shooter, except that he had been a student at Papillion-La Visa High School. He was reported to be still enrolled, although he dropped out in March last year.

Mass shootings have continued unabated across the United States in recent years, as disgruntled and usually suicidal gunmen have claimed victims in schools, on university campuses, at work places and even in church.

The Bush administration has refused to continue a federal ban on automatic weapons begun during the Clinton presidency, and gun laws remain lax enough to make it relatively easy to buy deadly weapons in just about any state in the union.

Omaha is on the eastern edge of Nebraska, a plains state which has made itself famous for cattle-raising and meat processing, right on the border with Iowa where politicians of all stripes have been campaigning hard in anticipation of the Iowa caucus on 3 January.

President Bush was in Nebrasksa yesterday to raise money for Republican candidates, but left shortly before the shooting started. Omaha is the home of Warren Buffett, the celebrity investor and financial guru, and also the setting for many of the films made by native son Alexander Payne films about the casual absurdity of heartland American life such as Election and About Schmidt.