HOWZAT

Chuck Wright said: “I heard this ‘bang, bang, bang’. And immediately I just froze. As I backed off, I heard ‘bang, bang’ again. It was just panic. Nobody knew what was going on.”

Kevin Kleine, 29, who was shopping with her four-year-old daughter, said: “My knees rocked. I didn’t know what to do, so I just ran with everybody else.”

Todd Trimpe told another Omaha television station, KMTV, that he saw police apprehend a man dressed in camouflage who was hiding under a bus stop bench outside the centre. It is thought that he was not involved in the incident.

Keith Fidler, an employee at the Von Maur store, where the shootings took place, said that he heard a burst of five to six shots followed by 15 to 20 more. He huddled in the corner of the men’s clothing department with about a dozen other employees until police yelled for them to leave.

Sergeant Teresa Negron said: “We have confirmed nine people . . . died from their injuries.” She said that police believed the man acted alone and were not aware of his motive.

Police received an emergency call from someone inside the mall, and shots could be heard in the background, Ms Negron said. By the time that officers arrived, six minutes later, the shooting was over.

One woman told KETV that she saw the gunman firing into the air inside the department store. “I saw the guy in the children’s department. He was tall, real tall,” she said. “He had his hand straight up in the air, just shooting, not saying anything.” Another witness, Shawn Vidlak, said that he heard four or five rapid shots “like a nail gun”.

At first he thought it was noise from building work. “People started screaming about gunshots,” Mr Vidlak said. “I grabbed my wife and kids we got out of there as fast as we could.”

Jeffrey Peck, the manager of a leather goods store, said that shop assistants ran up to tell him to close his store. “I told the customers to go into the back room and, as I was shutting the gate, I heard two gunshots ring out,” he said.

The Omaha massacre is the latest in a series to have scarred America this year. In April 32 students at the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, Virginia, were shot dead by Cho Seung Hui, and in October six young people were killed by an off-duty sheriff’s deputy at a house party in Crandon, Wisconsin.

Supporters of the American gun lobby have claimed that the Virginia Tech shootings could have been prevented if there had been no restrictions on firearm ownership. Newt Gingrich, the Republican former Speaker of the House of Represenatives, has claimed that citizens who carry weapons deter would-be shooters. Others have compared the 14,000 people killed by guns in America in 2005 with the total of 50 firearms deaths in England and Wales — which have some of the tightest firearms laws in the world — during the same period.

The Von Maur company issued the following statement last night: “We are deeply saddened by the horrific shooting. ”

Catalogue of killing

April 16, 2007 The deadliest rampage in US history happened at Virginia Tech university. Cho Seung Hui killed 32 people and himself

Oct 2, 2006 A milk truck driver who was not Amish tied up and shot ten Amish schoolgirls aged 6 to 14 in their classroom, killing five of them before turning the gun on himself in Pennsylvania

March 2005 A 16-year- old high school student shot dead five students, a teacher and a security guard in Minnesota before killing himself

November 1999 A Xerox copier repairman in Honolulu shot dead seven co-workers before fleeing. He surrendered to police after a five-hour standoff

September 1999 A 47-year-old killed seven people in a Texan Baptist church in Fort Worth. He then killed himself

July 1999 A day trader killed his wife and two children before shooting nine people to death at two Atlanta brokerages. He then killed himself

April 1999 Two students shot to death 12 other students and a teacher at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, before killing themselves

Source: Reuters

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