OMAHA, Neb. — The gunman who killed eight people in a mall shooting “just snapped,” he said in a hand-scrawled suicide note released Friday that combines love for his friends and family with nothing but contempt for his random victims.
“I know everyone will remember me as some sort of monster but please understand that I just don’t want to be a burden on the ones that I care for my entire life,” 19-year-old Robert A. Hawkins wrote.
“I just want to take a few peices (sic) of (expletive) with me.”
Police released the three-page note Friday afternoon.
Hawkins left the note at the house where he lived before going to Omaha’s Westroads Mall on Wednesday with an AK-47. He opened fire randomly in the Von Maur store, fatally wounding eight people before taking his own life.
He apologized to his friends in one page of the note, saying, “I’ve been a peice (sic) of (expletive) my entire life it seems this is my only option.”
He said his friends would be better off without him, and told them to remember good times they had.
“Just think tho I’m gonna be (expletive) famous,” he wrote.
He was more apologetic in another page addressed to his family.
“I’m so sorry for what I’ve put you through I never meant to hurt all of you so much and I don’t blame any one of you for disowning me,” he wrote.
“I’ve just snapped I can’t take this meaningless existence anymore I’ve been a constant disappointment and that trend would have only continued.”
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