Mother of mall shooter apologizes

OMAHA, Neb. - The mother of the teenage gunman who killed eight people at a busy shopping mall last week apologized Thursday for her son's crime and said she did her best raising him.

"I have been absolutely devastated," Maribel Rodriguez told The Associated Press. "The most difficult part is giving all of my best efforts to convey to all these beautiful people that I truly am sorry."

Her son, 19-year-old Robert Hawkins, fired more than 30 rounds inside a mall department store Dec. 5, striking 11 people. Eight of them died, and he killed himself. Families held funerals and memorial services for the victims this week.

Rodriguez said she is hurting more than the victims' families, since she is grieving for so many people: the victims, their friends and the community.

"My pain is a billion times greater than any of them," she said.

But, she added, she wishes more people had known her son.

"You guys really were robbed," she said. "That boy was oh-so funny."

Rodriguez had not had custody of Hawkins since she divorced his father about 15 years ago. When he was a teenager, there was one period when she did not have contact with him for more than two years.

"I'm not perfect, I know that," she said Thursday in an interview with ABC's "Good Morning America." "But you tell me: What could I have done differently? I did my best."

Rodriguez said that she sought psychiatric treatment after the shootings, and checked herself out to plan his funeral. She said she and her son had a good relationship, and she felt obligated to apologize for his actions.

"I would never want for anyone to do what I have done these last couple days," Rodriguez said.

Hawkins was a troubled teenager who spent four years in a series of treatment centers, group homes and foster care after threatening to kill his stepmother in 2002. He had recently broken up with a girlfriend and lost his job at a McDonald's.

"He was without hope. He was without faith. He was without courage," Rodriguez said during the televised interview. "Because you don't do that to other people. You just don't do that to other people."

She and Hawkins ate supper together with two of her daughters at the house of her ex-husband — Hawkins' stepfather — the night before the shootings, Rodriguez said. The stepfather was vacationing in Thailand.

She said she tried to comfort Hawkins about being fired from his job. Her son devoured the meal, a T-bone steak, baked potato and salad.

"When I came back to the house, there was this sense, there was this air that something was wrong," she said.

She and police have said Hawkins took the assault rifle he used in the shootings from his stepfather's closet.

After he left foster care, Hawkins was returned to his father's home in December 2005. He had left his father's home some time before the shootings and was living with the parents of two friends.

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