Robert Hawkins: How do you think this tragedy could have been averted?

Question

The tragegy of the shooting as well as the tragedy was was this young man's life.

On Wednesday, 19-year-old Robert Hawkins killed eight people and himself in a shooting rampage at an Omaha shopping mall, police said.

Surgical nurse Debora Maruca-Kovac, whose family took in Hawkins after her 17- and 19-year-old sons befriended him, said she saw victims of the mall shooting being brought in to the hospital where she works.Though he had his troubles, Hawkins was gentle and loved animals, Maruca-Kovac said. But he also had a drinking problem and would occasionally smoke marijuana in his bedroom, she said. Hawkins liked to listen to music and play video games — "normal teenager stuff," she said.
"He was a very helpful young man, but he was quiet," Maruca-Kovac said. "He didn't cause a lot of trouble. He tried to help out all the time. He was very thankful for everything. He wasn't a violent person at all."

In the note, Maruca-Kovac said, Hawkins said "how sorry he was for everything." He wrote that he loved his mom and dad and other family members and said he wasn't "going to be a burden anymore." He ended the note by saying that now he would be famous.

We see "gentle" but "troubled" people around us everyday.
How do we react to them? Are we helpful or do we put them down further?
What do you suggest could have averted these tragedies?

Answer 1

There is nothing in what you said that would suggest he was at risk for doing these horrible things. There were no tell-tale signs. If only we could find out what caused normal, peace-loving people to break into violence such as that.

As a parent I often wondered how my divorce would affect my children and was determined to make it as calm as I could and it was. Then he disappeared completely (we've not seen him in 4 years) and it really affected my kids. It turned out he'd been abusing three of them and they then felt free to abandon their love for him and see him for what he truly was. My youngest who wasn't abused only knew a great dad and cried for weeks and became very clingy towards me and was forever wanting reassurance that I wasn't going to run away. My eldest turned to drugs (but is off them now it was only a short term thing) but they're all finding it hard to form relationships.

What I'm saying is you just don't know how family backgrounds and dramas affect individuals. I'm only focusing on the family aspect as that is usually considered to be at the root of these things but who really knows why they happen?

It's very sad.

Answer 2

Thank you for your post.

Nothing justifies murdering innocent people, but I also believe that nothing justifies the "treatment" that this human being received from his parents or from a system all too ready to diagnose and dope up children. It is disgraceful: a latter-day Dickens tale.

Ronald Hawkins, Robert's father, sent his child away from home at age 14, to be left to the mercy of "the system" which is full of other troubled people. Hawkins' second wife (who didn't stick around until now anyway) accomodated (!).

If a single mother threw her son into the system because her new husband didn't get along with him, the public would think she was a heartless monster who cared about a man more than her child.

Ronald and wife #2 produced two more children to add to an already troubled household. People shouldn't even treat their pets this badly. Have a rambunctious dog? You don't send him to the pound to make room for two more. And we're talking about a human being.

Oh yes, Robert's mother? Out of the picture.

Human beings are not disposable. Perhaps the system would not have spent so much money (which seems to be their beef) if so much of it had not gone into drugs designed to "fix" a child who was having trouble adjusting to losing his birth mother, globetrotting all over the world, and getting a new momma who had no problem with sending him into the system. Perhaps the child's instinct as to her nature provoked his hostility towards her.

That child said what he wanted, and it was a perfectly reasonable request. To go home, to be with mother and father.

And the same "system" which encourages the administration of amphetamines and narcotics to children is hypocritical enough to call attention to the younger Hawkins' use of marijuana.

If the people you love and trust the most tell you through words and actions that something is "wrong" with you and subjugate your mind and spirit to psychotropic drugs, you are absolutely intelligent, sane and reasonable to feel worthless and hopeless.

If you are treated as disposable and a source of trouble from the time you are four years old, why should you be cursed for acting out the script that your family and society wrote for you?

http://www.omaha.com/index.php?u_page=27...

Answer 3

I think we have a whole society of people running around looking for something to make them happy. When happiness comes from within. And I don't have much faith in psychiatry or therapist, even though I have a psychologist in the family. Thats not saying that he didn't have any mental illnesses,. But I have seen first hand what the medical profession wants to do with everyone who has an issue or a problem. I lost my husband and 9 year old daughter in a car crash in 1999. My 15 year old son was the only survivor. When they told me at the hospital they were all there ready with some medication, which I refused. I needed to be alert for my sons needs at that moment,. all drugs do is delay having to go through the grief and pain. The point is, that is life. Its full of dissapointments, heartaches,. and pain. BUT its also full of joy and love and happiness. I made a concious choice to feel blessed that I had, had them at all in my life, rather than dwell on their passing. I had the tools within me to get through it. This poor boy was in pain. We teach kids everything else, but how to deal with life. This boy needed the tools to help himself get through things. he needed something he wasn't getting. I think I read that he felt he had been a dissapointment that nothing was going to change. With all the therapist and treatment he got., let alone what drugs they had him on, This was the end result? No one could help him? Who dropped the ball here? If drugs were the answer, we would have a whole nation of really happy people since many seem to be on a antidepressant now. I don't beleive drugs are the answer. I am not religious, but I am spiritual in beleiving in a higher power, and having faith. This boy took a permanent solution to a temporay problem. His life he felt was a mess and he didn't see it getting any better. He somehow couldn't see that everything passes and things change. Saying this I do know also that there are some individuals who cannot be helped.. I cannot say for sure if he was one of them,. but I don't think this was the answer either. Do I think TV and video games play a role? Probably a part of what he saw and what he knew about directed him towards the path he took,. There is much to be looked at in this case. We will probably never know the full reasons why he did what he did,. But lets pray to god that something has been learned here before we have another mass murder. And lets try and help the next Robert hawkins before its too late.

Answer 4

I wish there were an easy answer to that question. The fact is, people like Robert Hawkins almost always suffer in silence. Hate builds up slowly and sometimes there is no way for those who love them to know there is something going terribly wrong inside them. In hindsight, it's easy to point to individual things in his life and imagine that if things had been done differently, his life and those of his victims might have been saved. There was just no way for anyone to know.

To put it simply, the reason apparently normal people become so violent is hate; first towards themselves, and then towards the world in general. It can build up quietly for years before finally exploding. This hate can build up easily without the benefit of drugs, alcohol, loud music, games, movies, and other blame magnets.

While vigorous gun control laws could theoretically stop some would-be killers, it would do absolutely nothing to stop the suffering that leads to such unthinkable acts. When peaceful people get to the point of going on a murderous rampage, there is something seriously wrong. These people need our help. They need to be more understood, not simply feared. If more people felt genuinely loved, they wouldn't feel the need to take anybody's lives, and we wouldn't have to live in fear of every confused teenager we come across.

Answer 5

I have to agree with the first answer. Don't glamorize this crap through the media. The media is a powerful tool. They need to join forces and decide they are going to give very limited attention to these incidents and start focusing on POSITIVE things that people so. Let people know that doing good is going to get them more attention Han doing bad.

We need to start making parenting classes a major required course in schools too. Too many people are simply not paying attention to their kids causing them to seek attention in other ways.

It all boils down to the state of the economy. People can not afford to have one parent at home anymore. Too many parents are being forced to let their kids grow up in daycare centers and in schools where the bottom line is the almighty dollar. Schools are not the place kids are supposed to learn values, they should be learning that at home. But mom and dad are forced to both work, leaving little time and energy for properly raising a family.

I was very fortunate to be able to stay home and raise my kids and now I am helping raising my grandkids. But I'll tell you, it scares me when I think about the other kids my grandkids will be in school with. My granddaughter is in first grade, I go to all her school programs. I can already see what kids are starved for attention...and potentially dangerous.

And it scares the living hell out of me.

Answer 6

He obviously had something serious going on upstairs that he managed to hide from everyone but, really he just wanted to be noticed.
He may have had some mental disorder that no-one had cottoned onto and his wish to be famous was a cry for help to get the attention he craved.
It is sad really. If only he could of got help for how he was feeling if this was the case.
I just hope every lesson will be learnt from yet another killing in America.

Answer 7

I believe that many teenagers suffer angst and personal problems, which they can't see their way out. They have to be allowed to mature, to grow up beyond this intense navel gazing period of their lives.
And I do think that stricter gun laws might help. It is true that there will always be illegal guns out there and that criminals have guns. But criminals are not the ones that shoot down classrooms of kids for some perceived slight.
It's the gun obsessed teenager usually, with the need for revenge or power or fame.

Answer 8

I have wrestled with this since I heard about it earlier.This is so sad I have a son a little bit younger here.I think Sheepy has summed it up better than I could ever do

Answer 9

i don't have the answers to the prevention. but the fame thing from his not stuck out to me. so many times when you hear of this, the person had at least thought of the event making them famous. i think this strange draw can be avoided by stopping the super saturation in media coverage of these events. i know we need to be informed about what's happening in the world, but we don't need the story running in repetition 24/7 on all the news channels.

Answer 10

i dont think these tragedy's can be avoided.....i know its a simple answer to a very complex and deeply distressing event but i think if its gona happen its gona happen.....as much as his family can say he was gentle/helpful/quiet/animal loving individual he was still psychotic and a sociopath......all be it very well hidden.....nobody can take steps to help anyone with serious mental conditions that could lead to horrific violent episodes such as this one if they dont even know that this person has said conditions.....its tragic x