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Teen Gunman Shoots Up Utah Mall

A trench coat-clad teenager who opened fire on shoppers at a mall had one thing in mind: "to kill a large number of people."

And he likely would have killed more than five had an off-duty officer not confronted him, Salt Lake City's police chief said Tuesday.

"There is no question that [the officer's] quick action saved the lives of numerous other people," Chief Chris Burbank said.

Burbank identified the gunman as Sulejmen Talovic, an 18-year-old who lives with his mother in Salt Lake City, and said he had a backpack full of ammunition, the shotgun he was using and a .38-caliber pistol.

The teen killed five people and wounded four at the Trolley Square mall, including two people shot in the parking lot as he arrived around 7 p.m. Monday, another at the entrance and then five people inside a card store, Burbank said.

"It appears to be very random," he said. "There was no sense to why he was doing what he was doing.

"The suspect in this particular circumstance had one thing on his mind, and that was to kill a large number of people."

Had the off-duty Ogden police officer, who had a gun but no extra equipment or additional ammunition, not gone after the gunman, the teenager likely would have continued shooting people on his way through the mall, Burbank said.

Marie Smith, 23, a Bath & Body Works manager, said she had seen the gunman through the store window. She watched as he raised his gun and fired at a young woman approaching him from behind.

"His expression stayed totally calm. He didn't seem upset, or like he was on a rampage," said Smith, who crawled to an employee restroom to hide with others. He looked like "an average Joe," she said.

The victims were identified as Jeffrey Walker, 52, Vanessa Quinn, 29, Kirsten Hinkley, 15, Teresa Ellis, 29, and Brad Frantz, 24. Four people were hospitalized -- a 44-year-old woman and a 53-year-old man in critical condition, and a 34-year-old man and a 16-year-old boy in serious condition.

"We heard them say 'Police! Drop your weapon!' Then we heard shotgun fire. Then there was a barrage of gunfire," said Lund, 44. "It was hard to believe."

Source: http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/02/13/salt.l ... index.html

I don't have words...

You may not know this about me - but I lived there for a while. In fact, I went to the University of Utah - that's where I got my degree. I used to go to this mall all the time for the restaurants there...

I was totally freaked when I saw this because of the number of freinds I still have that live there. It's very strange ~ almost surreal ~ when something like this happens in a place you consider "close to home"...

Utah gunman was Srebrenica siege survivor: cousin

CERSKA, Bosnia (Reuters) - The 18-year-old gunman who shot dead five people in a Salt Lake City shopping mall was a survivor of the siege that ended in the Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Muslims in Bosnia's 1992-95 war, a cousin said on Wednesday.

Sulejman Talovic, who was killed by police after Monday's shooting spree in which he also wounded four people, fled his village with his family during the Bosnia war to Srebrenica, a U.N.-protected enclave, Redzo Talovic said.

They spent two years in the town, during which Bosnian Serb forces besieged the enclave and Sulejman's grandfather was killed by shellfire, Redzo said.

When the Bosnian Serbs overran the town in 1995, taking away and massacring some 8,000 Muslim men and boys, Sulejman and his mother were evacuated by the United Nations and later reunited with his father, Redzo said.

"They were a good, quiet family and I remember that he was a nice kid when he was four or five, maybe a little bit playful," he said, standing in front of the burnt-out shell of Sulejman's family home in the village of Talovici, eastern Bosnia.

"No one could have supposed that he was going to do such a thing," Redzo said. "Who knows what made him do that?" He could not say what marks Sulejman's childhood memories of wartime Bosnia had left on him.

Redzo said he was in shock when he heard the news.

"I couldn't believe it. I heard that his parents are dumbfounded, they can't believe he did that," said Redzo, one of the few villagers to have returned to Talovici.

Sulejman and his family never visited Bosnia or kept in touch after moving to the United States as refugees in 2000, Redzo said.

Police said Sulejman and his mother had lived in Salt Lake City for a few years, during which he had four minor incidents with police as a juvenile.

The teenager, dressed in a trench coat and carrying a shotgun, a .38 caliber pistol and what police said was a "backpack full of ammunition," opened fire at random on Monday evening, sending terrified shoppers running for cover.

Salt Lake City police chief Chris Burbank said the gunman seemed determined to "shoot as many people as he possibly could."

An off-duty police officer opened fire and stopped the youth from moving further through the mall before he was killed by police who arrived in force. Two men, two women and a 15-year-old girl died and four people were wounded.

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