I'll "Beat Cho's High Score"

November 8, 2007—19-year-old Robert Hawkins, who shot and killed eight people and wounded six others before shooting himself Thursday at a crowded shopping mall in Omaha, Nebraska, posted this blog less than an hour and a half before his shooting rampage:

"Later today I'm going to bring my rifle to Von Maur department store at the Westroads Mall, Omaha, Nebraska to try to beat Cho's high score. I'm going out in style."

The referral is to last April when computer gamer Seung Hui Cho shot to death 31 and wounded 15 at Virginia Tech university before also shooting himself. Hawkins saw himself in a computer game competition with the dead Cho, who played Microsoft's Counterstrike computer game, which rewarded successful "kills" with points. Police discovered the blog on Hawkins' computer, according to Action 3 news in Omaha, but didn't reveal the killer video games he played.

Today new developments point to the fact that Hawkins was not "a loner" but part of Rupert Murdoch's MySpace "family." On Thursday, police in Bellevue Nebraska, Hawkins' hometown, arrested a friend of Hawkins, 17-year-old David Hurwitz, for making "terrorist threats," according to Associated Press. He threatened to kill a teenage girl for making offensive remarks of Hawkins. All this was recorded on MySpace. Police found a rifle and two shotguns at Hurvitz's house--weapons he had access to, said Bellevue's police chief.