Funerals Continue For Mall Victims

(AP) — Funerals were held Tuesday for two more victims of last week’s deadly mall shooting, while a service for a third victim was delayed because of snow.

At the funeral for Angie Schuster, the Rev. Donald Shane referred not only to the eight people gunned down last Wednesday at Omaha’s Westroads Mall, but to the “tragic end” of their killer, 19-year-old Robert Hawkins.

“There were nine worlds shattered,” Shane said at St. Robert Bellarmine Catholic Church. The only way to heal those wounds is through forgiveness and love, he said.

A funeral for Maggie Webb was held in Moline, Ill., her hometown.

The funeral for 47-year-old Beverly Flynn was rescheduled for Wednesday morning because of weather, according to a recorded message at Glad Tidings Church in Omaha. Flynn was a real estate agent who wrapped gifts in the Von Maur department store during Christmas because she loved the holiday season.

Hawkins opened fire with an AK-47 in the Von Maur store, fatally wounding eight people before taking his own life.

Schuster, 36, of Omaha, was a manager in the girls’ department at Von Maur, where she had worked for nearly 10 years. Her older sister, Donna Kenkel, has said the department is near the third-floor elevator, which meant “she probably didn’t have any chance, any warning” against the gunman.

“They said he got off the elevator, and she would have been right there in his way,” she said.

Webb, who was about two weeks shy of her 25th birthday, was the youngest victim of the shooting rampage.

She transferred to the Omaha Von Maur store from a Chicago location earlier this year.

On Monday, funerals for Von Maur employees Janet Jorgensen, Dianne Trent, Gary Joy and shoppers John McDonald and Gary Scharf took place in Omaha and elsewhere Monday.

The Rev. Harry Buse presided over a Mass for Trent, 53.

“To be part of the sorrow of eight families grieving together is all the more overwhelming,” said Buse at St. Leo Catholic Church.

“It is like a whole city engaged in a huge group hug, embraced you and all grieving families into one common heartbeat of love and support,” he said. “It has been as if millions of hearts beat as one, sharing a sense of loss.”