Salt Lake City News

How Soon is Now

The Trolley Square Shooting: One Week Later

By Tracy Medley, 2-20-07

On Monday, February 12, 2007 Sulejman Talovic, an 18-year old Bosnian refugee, opened fire in Salt Lake City’s Trolley Square mall, killing 5 people and wounding four others before being killed himself in a shootout with police. One week later, we know very little about the young man who executed our neighbors in cold blood.

As police search for answers as to Talovic’s possible motive, our community finds itself at a crossroads where blame and healing collide; that moment when we decide what kind of city we are or at least want to be. Salt Lakers, more than anyone want to know why and how this happened here.

I should say that this terrifying act took place only blocks away from my home, in a mall where I have spent many hours over the past ten years eating meals, seeing films and meeting with friends. I was home preparing a story about private school vouchers when I saw the news, unfolding live; my virtual back yard lit up with sirens and lights and more police cars in one place than I had ever seen.

I thought instantly of my friend Doug. Doug and I have been friends since we were 14. We met at church in 1987 in Homestead, Florida, became instant friends and have been close ever since. We both ended up in Salt Lake after college; Doug is an actor, as he always wanted to be, but also works as the manager of the Trolley Square Pottery Barn. I just kept hoping that he wasn’t working that night– he was. Doug locked the door while customers took refuge inside the store making phone-calls to loved-ones. He was OK.

The news came in frantically: possibly five dead. Eyewitnesses gave accounts of walking over “piles” of bodies. I called my husband who was playing tennis at Liberty Park that night, but he didn’t answer his phone and paranoia struck. Liberty Park is really close, what if he just stopped into Trolley for an unexpected Valentine? Tragedy has a way of sparking the desperate fears inside all of us. He was fine of course, but all I could think about were the families of those who were not fine. That’s all most of us have been thinking about for the past week around here.

Local media – this website included - has been criticized, in some cases aggressively for not making more of the killer’s religion. Talovic was a Muslim, who occasionally attended at a local mosque, but so far that is the only fact we know. What we do not know and therefore will not report is whether his religion had any influence on his decision to shoot nine people last Monday. So far police have found no evidence to suggest that his actions were politically motivated or that the shooting was an act of Islamic-terrorism.

Talovic’s troubled childhood in war-torn Bosnia-Herzegovina may offer some insight. His family legally immigrated to the United States after fleeing genocide in their home country. Once in Utah, Talovic bounced from school to school where he made few friends and on two specific occasions was reprimanded for questionable acts of violence; suspended once for threatening a fellow student with a knife and again for using a school computer to look up information about the AK-47 assault weapon.

The “emotionless” young man who stepped into that mall, armed with 90 rounds of ammunition seems more closely aligned with Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris who, likewise laid siege to Columbine High school in 1999. He was a quiet boy who kept to himself and left very little behind to explain why he did what he did. But random acts of violence are difficult to process and hard to recover from, so, like the police - we’ll keep searching.

Update:Police have determined that the shotgun Talovic used in the shooting was obtained legally from a local sporting goods store, but are still looking for the origin of the pistol he carried in the attack.

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