My Way News - Police Release Images of Mall Gunman

My Way News - Police Release Images of Mall Gunman

State officials, aquaintances and police have described Hawkins as having a troubled past. He had broken up with a girlfriend recently and lost his job. Acquaintances said he was a drug user and that he had a history of depression.

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

In August 2006, social workers, the courts and his father all agreed: It was time for Hawkins to be released - nine months before he turned 19 and would have been required to leave anyway.

After reviewing surveillance tape, a suicide note and Hawkins' last conversations with those close to him, police said they don't know - and may never know - exactly why Hawkins went to the mall and opened fire.

About an hour before the shootings, Hawkins called Debora Maruca-Kovac, a woman who with her husband took Hawkins into their home because he had no other place to live. He told her he had written a suicide note, Maruca-Kovac said. In the note, Hawkins wrote that he was "sorry for everything" and would not be a burden on his family anymore.