Monday, December 10, 2007

No greater love

This is what, according to an article in the Omaha World-Herald, several of those gunned down at Omaha's Westroads Mall were doing at the moment they went to be with their God:
Firing away, the killer entered customer service, where he would end the carnage.

Hiding 15 feet from him was a 65-year-old grandfather and retired natural gas company manager, who suddenly emerged from the spot that concealed him and his wife and came into plain sight of the killer.

According to a family member's account given Sunday, John McDonald stood and confronted the 19-year-old gunman. It was a spontaneous act of courage that soon cost the Council Bluffs man his life, although it's possible that he helped spare more than a dozen people who were hiding nearby.

It appears that McDonald was one of the last of eight people killed by Robert Hawkins Wednesday at the Von Maur department store in the Westroads Mall.

Police are still investigating Omaha's worst single day of violence and have not determined the order in which Hawkins' victims fell.

McDonald was found in customer service, where Hawkins killed himself. An undisclosed number of rounds remained in his AK-47-style semiautomatic rifle.

Police released no new details of the rampage, but accounts Sunday from the families of McDonald and two other victims paint three portraits of courage in the face of chaos and terror.

The second involved Dianne Clavin Trent, the 53-year-old customer service worker who stayed on the phone with 911, describing the gunman until he took her life.

The third was customer Gary Scharf, 48, of Lincoln, who was on the first floor when he heard gunfire, ran up the escalator toward the carnage and shouted at Hawkins a floor above, "I called 911!"

All three were killed.

Omaha police declined Sunday to comment on the relatives' accounts. A spokesman for Omaha Mayor Mike Fahey said the scope of the crime, the number of detectives involved and the forensic evidence were too great at the moment to piece together exactly what happened and when.

Dr. Joe Shehan of Omaha, married to the only daughter of John and Kathy McDonald, said he bases his account on a detail that his mother-in-law shared in the car on their way home from the mall that day. It was a detail he forgot in the fog of grief and shock, and it is one Kathy McDonald left out of subsequent accounts until an Omaha police detective told the family what a hero they had in John McDonald:

That he left the hiding spot that concealed Kathy. That he left whatever protection that waiting room chair could offer as more than a dozen Von Maur employees huddled in fear in a back room that had no locking door and no other way out, should the gunman enter.

The police detective told McDonald's family that he stood and faced Hawkins. The gunman hadn't seen the McDonalds hiding when he entered, firing into customer service.

Hawkins struck four workers there and killed two, including Trent. She was telling a 911 dispatcher that "a young boy with glasses" was coming toward the counter.

"Oh my God!" she cried.

Her call ended with shots ringing in the background.

"Why she didn't drop that phone and run, we'll never know," said her sister, Kellie Schlecht.
AND WHAT was Robert A. Hawkins, 19 -- you know, the guy who wanted to "go out in style" -- doing right before he went to meet his Maker? He was gunning down unarmed, innocent people with a high-powered rifle in the Von Maur store at Westroads.

"Go out in style," indeed.

Cat's in the cradle . . . cat's in the cradle.

And as I hung up the phone it occurred to me
He'd grown up just like me
My boy was just like me
Or us and our sick little culture . . . as the case may be.

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