The gunman, identified by as Robert A Hawkins, who was 19 or 20, of nearby Bellevue, was described by friends as a depressed person who had lost his job at a McDonald’s restaurant earlier in the day.

Shoppers and store clerks described a scene of panic and chaos after hearing shots even as a pianist at the store played on.

Many witnesses, still in disbelief about what they had heard, dived into closets and storage rooms, crouched in dressing rooms, crowded behind desks and then began what became a long and terrifying wait, punctuated by more and more shots.

“All I could think was where is he, what if he comes through that door, what if he comes through right now,” recalled Kevin Kleine, 29, a shopper who hid in a storage room with her four-year-old daughter, Emily, and four women she had never met, including an expectant mother.

The group pushed every table, rack and garbage can they could find against the door and huddled behind clothes, making hushed calls to 911, to their husbands and to their parents.

Then began the long wait, Ms Kleine said, 30 minutes, staring at that door.

Visitors to the Westroads Mall said they were eating lunch or browsing in stores when three or four shots sounded just after 1:30 pm on the third floor of the Von Maur department store.

Witnesses said they could not see where the shots had come from and scanned up and down the three floors of the mall, unsure how to escape something they could not see.

Others said they dismissed the noises as balloons popping or construction noises.

But quickly, as four more shots popped, people scrambled for cover. Some screamed. Others ran, dropped to the floor or searched for doors, dressing rooms and employee lounges.

Some people told of horrific images they saw. A man talking on his cellphone and then falling to the floor.

Someone shot in the back of the head, covered in blood. Someone else shot on the second floor while looking up an escalator.

Mickey Vickroy, 74, a worker in the gift wrap section of Von Maur’s, said she saw her manager on his side and another co-worker on his back. She saw another woman crumpled, and a young man flat on his back, motionless.
Scores of police officers began swarming to the mall six minutes after the first call, police officials said. They locked down the mall.

Police helicopters circled overhead as officers searched for the gunman. Clusters of shoppers and workers, meanwhile, hid, unsure what would come next.

The police went store to store, department to department, finding clusters of people and ushering them out — hands over their heads to show that they were not the gunman — to safety outside. There, some wept and clutched one another in the frozen air.

Eventually, the police found Hawkins’ body. A suicide note was found, they said.

STRAPLINE

No one’s child

Outside the house in Bellevue where Robert Hawkins had lived, Debora Kovac, whose family had taken him in, said he had wrestled with problems. He was estranged from his family. In the last two weeks, Ms Kovac said, he had lost his girlfriend.

“He was like a lost pound puppy,” she said. “Nobody wanted him.” Less than an hour before the shooting, Hawkins had called Ms Kovac, she recounted. He apologised to her for all the trouble he had caused, she said. He also left a note.