Grief, apologies from mom

It seems everyone is trying to figure out what was going on in Robert Hawkins' mind when he decided to shoot a bunch of innocent people at Westroads. It's obvious he was seriously troubled. Maybe mentally ill.

Fact is, we'll never know his mental state. Was it mental illness or was it just flat-out poor character and immaturity that led to his action? Did he have a breakdown or was he just rotten?

Blame doesn't help heal. But figuring out why this kid went off can help us prevent future events. That's I guess why I'm curious, interested and reading stories about this kid's story.

I'm troubled by accounts of his upbringing and his family life and was struck by the parents' attitudes that they did the best they could. As a parent of children who have gone through their own troubled times, I understand the response, "I did the best I could." I've thought and said that often. But to be brutally honest, it's a cop-out. There's always something we parents could have done differently, and I know we can't go back and change those things now, but by deflecting the honest examination of what "we did" doesn't help any of the rest of us realize what we can do to treat the symptoms of illness and troubled actions that are plaguing others, and figure out how to prevent horrible painful tragedies like these in the future.

Robert Hawkins' parents had difficulties and many of us do. But, hopefully most of us respond to our difficulties without fleeing or abandoning our problems, without using drugs, without blaming others. Robert Hawkins' mother used drugs in front of him. I won't even go into how messed up that is and what it did to Robert. She and others in Robert's life also encouraged him to use guns, made guns available to him, taught him that guns and violence are appropriate.

That's doing the best they could?

I really don't think that blame will help anyone here, but scrutiny and examining people's actions and responses and excuses and attitudes is actually appropriate and I hope we can all learn something from it. Hopefully, people will learn that raising children in a home with drugs and guns is dangerous and irresponsible - and that the rest of us who don't raise our families that way aren't accepting it.

Yes, we're sorry for Robert's mother's grief and we feel her sorrow. I just can't help but wish she and others in Robert's life would have tried a little harder - and made some better decisions. I hope and pray all these families find some peace and healing and resolve to make the world a more peaceful place.


Omaha World Herald
Published Friday | December 14, 2007
'He was my baby boy,' mother says in apologizing for rampage
BY PAUL HAMMEL
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER

The mother of Robert Hawkins issued a tearful apology on Thursday for her son's deadly rampage at Westroads Mall, saying "these beautiful people need to see for themselves that I love them."

"This is devastation, absolute devastation," said Maribel "Molly" Rodriguez of Bellevue. "It wasn't just eight people who died, it was eight families."

"There's a piece of every one of those families that is gone. . . . I know that, because I'm experiencing that, too."

Sobs punctuated the telephone interview Rodriguez gave The World-Herald from New York City. She had flown there to appear on the "Good Morning America" show Thursday.

Rodriguez, who was divorced from Hawkins' biological father in 1991, said in the phone interview that she was apologizing — in the interview and on the TV show — because no one else in the family had stepped forward.

"He was my baby boy," Rodriguez said. "These beautiful people need to see for themselves that I love them, and to give them the best apology I possibly knew how."

"You tell me," she added, "how do you deliver an apology for eight families?"

In her television appearance, Rodriguez, 41, said she last heard from her son in a voice mail message he left her on the day of the shootings.

The night before, Hawkins had eaten dinner with his mother and his two half sisters at the home of his former stepfather, Mark Dotson, Rodriguez's former husband. Dotson has said the 19-year-old took the AK-47-style rifle used in the slayings when Rodriguez and her daughters left Hawkins alone for an hour while they went shopping.

Dotson was in Thailand at the time.

"Good Morning America" played a phone message from Hawkins to his mother in which a crying and sniffling Hawkins is heard saying, "Hi, Mom. It's me. I just wanted to let you know that I love you. I'm sorry for everything. I'll see you later. Goodbye."

Rodriguez described her son as "without hope," "without faith" and "without courage."

"Because you don't do that to other people. You just don't do that to other people," she said.

Rodriguez told The World-Herald that she has not always been in Hawkins' life. She said, however, that her son — who had been staying with a Bellevue area family for more than a year — had visited her apartment regularly in recent weeks. When she and Hawkins' father, Ronald Hawkins, divorced, the father was awarded custody of Hawkins and his older sister.

Hawkins had moved in with the other family after reportedly being told he no longer could live with his father's family in La Vista.

Rodriguez said her son did not live with her because he "wasn't ready" to live by the rules she had laid down for that to happen.

"I told him, 'Go.' I know what 18-year-old boys like to do," she said. "They're entitled to be a little mischievous," Rodriguez added, mentioning "doing drugs" and sleeping with girls.

"All I told him was when you're ready to come back to mommy, come back to mommy and we'll work on your life," the mother said.

Private funeral services for Hawkins were held Tuesday morning. Rodriguez said in the phone interview that she had made the funeral arrangements from a psychiatric ward, where she checked herself in following the shootings.

About 20 people — mostly family members — attended the service, Rodriguez said.

She said she left two items in Hawkins' coffin: a photo of the two together and a note telling him that she loved him and that "everything I always told him about our Heavenly Father was correct."

When asked in the phone interview why her son did what he did, Rodriguez said that Hawkins was "very angry" and "totally confused" and that he "wasn't sure if he was evil or not."

"He had been told all of his life that something was wrong with him, that something was not right with him," Rodriguez said.

She said her son felt like the world was against him. Hawkins, she said, told her he had been fired from a McDonald's because his cash register had come up $17 short. He had even reached into his own pocket to give back $12, she said.

"He wasn't a horrible boy; he wasn't a bad boy," the mother said.