[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 24]
[House]
[Pages 32506-32507]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




            TRAGEDY AT THE WESTROADS MALL IN OMAHA, NEBRASKA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Terry) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. TERRY. Mr. Speaker, I rise today with great sadness, for 
yesterday, at about 2 p.m., a tragedy occurred in my hometown, where 
eight people were killed, gunned down, some of them employees at Von 
Maur, others just shopping for the Christmas holidays. To those 
families, those eight families who lost a loved one so senselessly, my 
thoughts and my prayers go out to you. I can't imagine what you're 
going through today.
  Our whole community across Nebraska, eastern Nebraska, western Iowa, 
not just Omaha, is scarred by this tragedy. A very disturbed 19-year-
old man walks into this mall and this store and begins randomly 
shooting at people.
  The victims of this terrible tragedy, this massacre: Gary Scharf, who 
was shopping, a resident of Lincoln, Nebraska; John McDonald, a 
customer, resident of Council Bluffs, Iowa. By the way, his daughter 
was an associate attorney for me. I have been communicating with her. 
To her, Suzanne Sheehan, and your family, my deepest condolences.
  Also killed were six Von Maur employees: Angie Schuster, Maggie Webb, 
Janet Jorgenson, Diane Trent, Gary Joy, and Beverly Flynn, all of 
Omaha. Some of these were only 10 minutes from their shift being over 
and would be out of this store. Some of them are young mothers, leaving 
small children. There were others who were seriously injured, like Fred 
Wilson and Michelle Oldham. Others were also injured, like Jeff 
Schaffer and Brad Stafford.
  Now just to put this in context, the first 911 call went out, and 
within 6 minutes our emergency response, our EMS, and our Omaha Police 
were in that store. But it was all done and over with by the time they 
could get there. The damage was already done. But they immediately 
began working on those that were injured and securing the mall for the 
other thousands of shoppers that were there.

[[Page 32507]]

  I want to thank publicly our first responders from not only the city, 
but Douglas County, Sarpy County, the State Patrol, for their heroic 
efforts given in this tragedy. Now a tragedy of this scope and scale is 
just unthinkable. It's hard to get my mind around this. There's no way 
for us to understand this senseless act of violence, and I ask the 
entire country to pray for peace and healing during this difficult time 
for these families in our community.
  God bless.

                          ____________________