Chilling 911 calls detail Omaha mall massacre

OMAHA, Neb. — The first phone call from Westroads Mall came in to 911 dispatchers at 1:42 p.m. No voice was on the line.

Only silence punctuated by 23 gunshots.

In the next six minutes, the Douglas County 911 center received 48 more calls. Panicked people inside the mall and family members called as 19-year-old Robert Hawkins shot up the Von Maur department store.

Their frantic voices, desperate pleas for help and even their silence provide a chilling account of the chaos that reigned as Hawkins took the lives of eight people before ending his own on a day that will be remembered as one of Omaha's darkest.

Mark Conrey, director of the Douglas County 911 center, described the calls as "extremely disturbing."

Callers frantically dial from bathrooms and storage rooms as they flee from the hail of bullets.

In the second call to 911, a woman breathlessly relays the situation as she hides with six others in a sales associate area.

"I'm at Von Maur at Westroads Mall. There is gunfire in the building! Everybody is freaking out. There are shots nonstop. ... There is a ton of them. There is a ton of gunfire."

The third call was from a woman who was close enough to give dispatchers a brief description of Hawkins and an estimate of the number of wounded.

"Oh my God! Maybe 10 or 15," she tells a 911 operator during her brief call. "Oh my God, there's a young boy. Oh my God! Oh my God! Please send somebody fast! He's a young boy, he's a young boy with glasses. Oh my God!"

The call ends with shots ringing in the background.

Perhaps the most remarkable call was placed at 1:50 p.m. by Jodi Longmeyer, Von Maur's human resources manager, who was on the third floor, where most of the carnage occurred.

For nearly a half-hour, Longmeyer remains on the phone with dispatchers, directing them to where victims are located and to the body of the gunman.

She comforts a victim as she offers a brief description of the shooter, who she guesses was about 5-foot-8, in his mid-20s, with an "automatic type of gun."

She even apologizes when she can't recall more information about the gunman.

"I can't think of anything. I'm sorry, I just — when I heard the gunshot, I got down as soon as possible because I have kids."

Longmeyer calls from a phone in the employee locker room. She transfers her 911 call to Von Maur's security office, which is inside the locker room. She locks herself in and monitors security cameras throughout the store.

Using the cameras, she describes the third-floor scene to the 911 operator, who relays it to emergency responders.

From the security office, Longmeyer sees a body on the floor and assumes it is the shooter. "I see him lying there by the gun," Longmeyer says as she bursts into tears.

"I don't want to look anymore. I'm not looking."

Police eventually make their way up to the security office, and Longmeyer leaves without even hanging up the phone.

The Douglas County 911 center was flooded with calls during the shooting, although the total number wasn't clear, Conrey said. Seven operators and dispatchers struggled to field the onslaught of calls and had to put some callers on hold.

Some people in the mall reported that they were unable to get through to 911.

"It was a combination of our operators going from call to call to call, and the cell towers being overloaded," Conrey said. "Every cell phone in the world was going off in that area."

The 911 calls continued for some time because people were hiding in storage rooms, dressing rooms and other places, and they didn't know what was going on, Conrey said. Police eventually had to locate those people and escort them away.

Conrey said the situation hasn't been easy to cope with for the dispatchers who took calls during the massacre, but chaplains were on hand Thursday to talk to staff.

"They are doing their best to handle it," he said.

But it won't be easy to shake the memory of those desperate calls, some delivered in hushed and fearful tones — such as one that came in at 1:45 p.m.

"Von Maur," the voice whispered. "Can't talk."

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Omaha World-Herald Staff writer Henry J. Cordes contributed to this report.