Westroads Mall shooting

On December 5, 2007, Robert Arthur Hawkins, 19, killed eight people and injured four others in a shooting at the Von Maur department store in Westroads Mall, Omaha, Nebraska, before taking his own life. It was described as the deadliest mass murder in Nebraska since Charles Starkweather's killings in 1958.

About an hour before the attack, Hawkins' mother gave the Sarpy County Sheriff's Department a suicide note he had written, which included the statement that he wanted "to take a few peices [sic] of shit" with him and referenced becoming "famous." Surveillance footage showed Hawkins entering the store's south entrance unarmed around 1:36 p.m. CST, briefly walking inside, then leaving. He returned six minutes later carrying a Century WASR-10 semi-automatic rifle, a commercial copy of the AKM chambered in 7.62×39mm, stolen from his stepfather's house, along with two 30-round magazines taped together and concealed in a sweatshirt. He took an elevator to the third floor.

At 1:43 p.m. CST, Hawkins exited the elevator and opened fire, first killing two women near clothing racks, then firing into the atrium to kill two men on lower floors, wounding two more people on the third floor (one fatally), and finally shooting several people at the customer service desk, killing three there. He then died by suicide, shooting himself upward through the chin. In total, he fired 41 rounds, including the fatal shot to himself, striking 12 people. Six victims were killed instantly, one died en route to the hospital, and another died 45 minutes after arrival at a different hospital's emergency room. Omaha Police arrived at the mall about six minutes after the first 911 call. Audio and transcripts of those calls, along with mall security footage, were released by police on December 7, 2007. An autopsy found Hawkins had 200 nanograms per milliliter of Valium in his system, within the low end of the therapeutic range, and no other drugs.

Eight people were killed: six Von Maur employees and two customers. Four others survived gunshot or shrapnel wounds, including a customer service manager and another employee who were critically injured, a customer treated for arm and hand wounds, and a woman who sustained a bruise from a bullet fragment.

Hawkins had a documented history of mental health treatment beginning in early childhood, including diagnoses of attention-deficit disorder, PTSD, an unspecified mood disorder, and oppositional defiant disorder. He had been a ward of the State of Nebraska for several years, was expelled from one high school, later dropped out of another, and had recently been fired from a job and separated from a girlfriend. He had also been ticketed weeks earlier on alcohol-related charges and had a prior juvenile felony drug conviction.

In the aftermath, the Von Maur store became the site of memorials, and a victims' fund exceeded one million dollars by January 2008. Von Maur's store reopened on December 20, 2007, though the mall itself reopened earlier. Hawkins' mother publicly apologized for his actions in a televised interview.