I know as a mother and a daughter that there is nothing greater or more important than a mother's love. The love of family unconditionally is something a child needs and as he grows into a man this love is like a backbone, this love and these people around him who would do anything to help him become his strength. He is able to seek shelter and refuge from the cruel world and as he is spinning into that hole of despair these people are there to drag him back up. I have a 14 year old son and I love him to the point of hysteria, I know he feels my love and that makes him feel like he is important and wanted, but more than that, it makes him feel safe.
Robert Hawkins, 19 did not have this kind of love. This is not an excuse for what he has done, as his actions are UNREASONABLE and dramatic.
He walked into a mall in Omaha and killed 9 people including himself. The people he killed were innocent and had absolutely nothing to do with Robert's pain, but to Robert they had much more than he and for that he hated them.
Robert had a troubled childhood, he was on Ritalin by 3 years old, then Zoloft, his parents divorced and he was then bounced from Foster home to Foster home. His mother was single and overwhelmed and it seems could not handle her son, who later became a ward of the state at 15 and by 19 was taken in by a friend's mother where he lived and spoke to his now remarried mother and sisters. Why didn't he live with his mother? I don't want to blame her, but the night before the shooting she had dinner with her son, he was depressed and then on a hunch after he had kissed them goodbye, she checked her husband's gun cabinet and found there was a rifle missing, but assumed he took it to pawn.
That night his friend's mother who had taken him in off the streets (again why not his mother, I am sure Robert asked this same question) saw him with the gun and assumed he and her sons were going hunting. The day of the shootings Robert made several calls and sent several text messages to these people in his life as I will imagine was a cry for help, he left letters in his room as well. No one seemed to assume anything was out of the ordinary, even after Robert called his friend's mother and apologized for being a burden on her and thanked her for taking him in.
Imagine living your entire life feeling like you are a burden to everyone around you? Why then would you turn around and hurt innocent people? Because you want them to suffer like you? Because you want to be famous? Because you think its cool? Because you hate the world? I ask you, do you think Robert would have felt this way if someone in his life cared enough to stick with him and love him to the point of hysteria? Where is his father? Why did his mother remarry have more children and NOT bring Robert into that circle of family? Instead she let him fall into that hole of despair and to his shock no one tried to pull him up.
His mother is now going on television apologizing to the victims and their families for what her son did. Not a tear shed for him as she speaks.
I think more than anything she needs to apologize to ROBERT first. I know most want to hate this kid and he deserves hate and I am not saying I understand his choice, taking the lives of others was evil,cruel and selfish, but is there no one else to stand up and say I failed this kid?
If the media stops sensationalizing these school, mall and now church shootings, will these young kids then lose interest is "becoming famous"?
Another lesson to be learned, don't ASSUME everything is ok. If you have guns in your home DON'T act like they are golf clubs, lock them up!.
Rest in peace to all the dead.
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