Friends and family members mourned the loss of loved ones as funeral services and vigils began over the weekend for the victims of the Omaha, Nebraska, shooting.
Janet Jorgensen, 67, was planning the wedding for one of her granddaughters and had helped her husband of 50 years fight cancer before she was fatally shot on Wednesday by a teenage gunman at Westroads Mall. Her funeral was held Sunday.
Jorgensen was an employee at Von Maur department store where 19-year-old Robert A Hawkins of Bellvue, Nebraska, opened fire, killing eight people before taking his own life. It was the second mall shooting this year in the United States.
Separate visitations were held Sunday for store employees Gary Joy, 56, and Dianne Trent, 53.
"What happened at the Westroads Mall last Wednesday happened to each and every one of us," the Rev Bert Thelen of St John's Parish at Creighton University said in his sermon on Sunday, according to The Associated Press.
Hundreds of parishioners remembered the victims with candles labelled with the victims' names lit at the front of the sanctuary. A funeral service for John McDonald, who was shopping at the department store, was to be held at St John's church on Monday.
The popular Omaha mall reopened Saturday while the Von Maur store itself remained closed. Its reopening day is undetermined.
Shoppers, however, did not have the same holiday cheer as they walked through the mall.
"It doesn't feel like a Christmas feeling," said John Andrews who went to the mall to buy Christmas presents, according to AP.
A makeshift memorial was placed at the entrance of the mall where some grieved what is reported to be the worst shooting in Nebraska's history.
"I think it's important that we show the solidarity that we're all here for both the employees and the customers," Mayor Mike Fahey told CNN.
Surveillance footage released by the Omaha Police Department on Friday showed Hawkins entering the Von Maur store and then leaving on the day of the shooting. He was captured again by a surveillance camera about six minutes later re-entering, clutching his midsection as if hiding something, and then stalking towards elevators.
