It was a shock yesterday to hear that a young, obviously disturbed gunman opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle at Westroads Mall in Omaha, immediately killing eight people, then himself. He wounded five others, who may or may not survive.

This was particularly upsetting to me because I frequented that mall throughout high school. It is a nice, large shopping center in a suburban area where no one would ever think that this unthinkable violence could happen. Omaha has a high incidence of gun violence, but it pretty much always happens in the poorer, North side and to a lesser extent in South Omaha - both of which are miles, and actually worlds away, from the Westroads.

As recently as October, we were in that same general area to attend my nephew’s wedding reception. In May, we also stayed at a motel within a mile of the Westroads, which also is near the mortuary where we held my mother’s funeral.

Authorities did not release the random victims’ names until Thursday morning. Thankfully, I did not recognize any of them. I won’t use the gunman’s name because in the note he left behind said he would be famous for his shooting spree. I don’t want to perpetuate that posthumous “fame.”

This tragedy reminds me of the mass casualty drills at Alton Square that I covered for The Telegraph this past Oct. 28 and in June 2001. The drills involved Alton police, firefighters, local hospitals and ambulance services, the county emergency management agency, Red Cross and Salvation Army. In October, the drill activated the city’s incident Emergency Operations Center for the first time, comprised of various officials and department heads.

Emergency responders involved in such drills have to suspend reality somewhat during the process. It’s less tense because no one’s life actually is at stake and there is no real “bad guy,” but the responders fine-tune the protocol to respond quickly to such a situation. The 2001 drill at Alton Square actually involved a scenario chillingly similar to the Omaha tragedy, involving two shooters wounding 14 people, nine of whom “died.”

The young man in Omaha also shot 14 people, including himself, resulting in nine dead as of this writing.

Both times I wondered, “Could this really happen here? Do they need to do this?” Now I know if it could happen at the Westroads, it could happen anywhere, sad to say.

Westroads was the shopping center of choice for many Omahans in the 1960’s and 1970’s, and probably beyond that. I don’t know, I didn’t live there after that. With the city’s explosive growth westward, many more shopping centers have popped up on former rolling farmland. The three-level mall has more than 135 stores and gets 14.5 million visitors each year, its Website says. The Von Maur store, where the shooting occurred, came after I left Omaha.

When I was in high school, the Westroads was the biggest mall in the region. My best friend Laura and I would ramble through the long hallways, with anchor department stores at each end, and dozens of various-sized shops in-between. Some businesses were so small, they nearly qualified as booths. One such favorite sold imported costume jewelry and various “exotic” figurines, candle holders and incense from India. I think it was called Bombay. You had to shop from the display counter while standing a few inches inside the hallway.

We would always stop at another small space, Orange Julius, and gulp down the frosty, frothy beverage before heading to another store. A big draw to teen-agers was the multi-screen theater that offered the latest flicks, the first such theater that I’d ever heard of with several screens. I saw many movies there with Laura and while on dates.

When Laura and I went to see “Che,” we each sneaked in a glass bottle of soda, taking sips and then setting them on the floor. During some quiet point in the movie, one of us accidentally kicked over one of the bottles and it clattered all the way down under rows of seats to the front of the theater to our embarassment. Back then, such an offense didn’t get you kicked out of a theater.

I left Omaha to go to college and never moved back. However, learning of that tragedy was upsetting. I still have a sister and cousin and their families living there, along with numerous in-laws, friends of my dead parents and former classmates.

My heart goes out to the victims and their families. The victims were people who had to work that day or simply chose the wrong hour - or instant - and location to shop. The shoppers maybe were thinking of what perfect gift they were going to pick up for someone - who now instead is mourning them today - or how many days they had left to get their Christmas shopping done.

Sadly, the countdown actually was time they had left on Earth, and it was in minutes ticking away as they walked into the Westroads.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.