OMAHA — Security guards watching surveillance cameras notice the young man with the brown flop of hair who walks into Von Maur at Westroads Mall.

Robert Hawkins looks around for a moment Wednesday afternoon before walking back out the store’s main entrance.

Six minutes pass before he returns, carrying a balled-up hooded sweatshirt. He steps into the elevator near the main entrance and rides it to the third floor.

“And upon exiting the elevator, he immediately started firing shots,” Omaha Police Chief Thomas Warren said Thursday.

Store employees and customers, many initially unable to process what’s happening, hide in clothing racks, in bathrooms, in storage areas.

Authorities get the first phone call for help at 1:42 p.m. Emergency operators dispatch police two minutes later.

The first officers arrive at 1:48.

It’s already over.

The 19-year-old emotionally troubled Hawkins used an AK-47 assault rifle stolen from his stepfather to kill eight and injure four others.

Then he killed himself.

“Mall security did not have an opportunity to intervene,” the police chief said, adding the guards are unarmed. No off-duty police officers, who sometimes work at the mall, were there Wednesday.

Authorities revealed new details about the mall shooting during a press conference Thursday at Omaha City Hall. But the police chief made it clear that analysis of the surveillance tape and hours of forensic work have yet to reveal any logic behind the killings.

“It appeared the shooting victims were randomly selected,” Warren said.

Warren read the names of the eight dead, including Gary Scharf, 48, of Lincoln, one of two customers killed. The six others were employees.

“We continue to pray for the victims of this unspeakable tragedy,” said Jim von Maur, president of the Iowa-based department store chain. He added the company will provide counseling services to employees and families and establish a memorial fund.

Two of the wounded remained in Omaha hospitals Thursday while the other two were treated and released Wednesday evening.

Authorities found seven of the fatally wounded victims on the third floor and one on the second.

Five were women, three were men.

They found Hawkins dead of a self-inflicted gunshot near the third-floor customer service desk.

Authorities also recovered two 30-round ammunition magazines and an undetermined number of empty cartridge casings and live rounds. They had not yet learned if the weapon was legally purchased by the owner, Warren said.

Not since Charles Starkweather murdered 10 in Nebraska and another in Wyoming nearly 50 years ago have so many died at the hands of a killer in the state.

On Thursday, Nebraska’s largest city tried to cope with the reality that senseless, mass murder can happen here, too.

“We are still reeling from the events that few of us could have imagined in Omaha,” Mayor Mike Fahey said.

The mayor called the killings an act of cowardice and said the innocents who died Wednesday did not deserve their fate.

On local talk radio, callers expressed sympathy for the victims and their families. One drive-time host vowed never to speak the killer’s name in reaction to a suicide note in which Hawkins predicted he would now be famous.

Churches across the city announced prayer services and vigils for the victims. At St. John’s Catholic Church on the campus of Creighton University, an estimated 450 people attended a lunch-hour Mass and prayer service. Church officials placed votive candles in front of the altar, each named for one of the dead or injured.

While a sharper chronology of the shooting emerged Thursday, investigators still have much work to do at the crime scene. The mall was closed Thursday and while authorities anticipated it would reopen today, Von Maur will likely remain closed longer.

Police also will continue interviewing Hawkins’ friends and family to find out what he may have revealed about his plans ahead of time. Investigators learned he left a voice message to his mother, had conversations with friends and exchanged text messages with his ex-girlfriend, Warren said.

And police determined Hawkins visited a friend who lives near Westroads Mall. The police chief did not describe the communications or say additional arrests had been made as of Thursday morning.

While investigators believe Hawkins frequented the mall, he does not appear to have any direct  connection to Von Maur.

According to those who knew Hawkins, he was quiet and withdrawn and he battled depression. His parents were divorced, and he was living with another family in Bellevue. He had recently broken up with a girlfriend and lost his job at McDonald’s, apparently for stealing money from the business.

Police confiscated three notes left by Hawkins, but Warren declined to discuss their contents.

State officials also revealed Hawkins spent four years in a series of treatment centers, group homes and foster care after threatening to kill his stepmother in 2002.

Finally, in August 2006, social workers, the courts and his father all agreed it was time for his release — nine months before he turned 19 and would have been required to leave anyway. 

On Thursday, while some of those who knew Hawkins called the massacre Wednesday at a busy Omaha mall unexpected, not everyone was surprised.

“He should have gotten help, but I think he needed someone to help him and needed someone to be there when in the past he’s said he wanted to kill himself,” said Karissa Fox, who said she knew Hawkins through a friend. “Someone should have listened to him.”

Hawkins dropped out of Papillion-La Vista High School as a senior in March 2006, said Annette Eyman, communications director for the school district.

Several students who wanted help coping visited with counselors Thursday. The services were provided not just because a former student was the killer, but because the shootings affected the community as a whole, she said.

Eyman said Hawkins didn’t participate in extracurricular activities but he wasn’t considered a loner. He wasn’t known to be a victim of bullying.

“He had a very difficult time attending school,” she said.

Reach Joe Duggan at 473-7239 or jduggan@journalstar.com. This story contains material from The Associated Press.