That_Guy
12-04-2008, 12:49 PM
http://www.omaha.com/index.php?u_page=2798&u_sid=10504660
For 11 months, the question has hounded police, prosecutors and, most of all, Brittany Williams' family.
http://www.omaha.com/neo-images/photos/medium/0915lsbormann.jpg (javascript:enlargePhoto(317000))
Kyle Bormann
Why did Kyle Bormann snuff out Williams' life and throw away his own?
Neither Williams' family nor prosecutors have been convinced that Bormann shot Williams just because, as he told police, he was angry about a referee's call in an NFL game. And neither Bormann's attorney nor his relatives have been convinced that he targeted Williams, a black woman, in a racist rage — as prosecutors alleged.
Indeed, both sides may have reason for their skepticism.
Newly released text messages, retrieved from Bormann's cell phone by Omaha police, show that Bormann's motives may have run deeper than his dismay over a blown call and his actions may have been fueled more by self-loathing than by a loathing of black people.
The messages, sent hours before the Jan. 20 sniper shooting of Williams, paint a picture of a young man who was acting desperate and despondent even before his demented acts.
Bormann sent a few terse messages to a girlfriend about 4 a.m. Jan. 20 — some 16 hours before he tore out of his father's Ponca Hills home, drove into north Omaha, peered down the high-powered scope of his hunting rifle and shot Williams, 21, in a restaurant drive-through.
"I'm sorry about everything," he wrote in the messages, obtained this week by The World-Herald. "I've just realized lately how much everything is (expletive) up in my life and how much of it is my fault cause of my careless actions and horrible addictive personality."
The text messages have led authorities to wonder if Bormann, then 19, had designs on ending his own life — and on taking someone down with him.
Bormann's attorney denies that — attributing the texts to the "hyperbolic rants" of a teenager and the shooting to the drunken impulse of a young man.
But Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine said the text messages, the references to race and referees "are all pieces of the puzzle" in a puzzling case.
The court case came to a close Tuesday with Bormann's receiving 80 years to life in prison — and with Williams' mom, Sumalia Gunter, questioning why Bormann would target a woman he had never met.
Kleine and prosecutors have argued that Bormann killed Williams, a senior at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, because she was black. Hours after the shooting, Bormann told a detective, "I imagine I was pissed off at black people" because of a referee's call in an NFL playoff game involving Green Bay, his favorite team.
In the hours before the shooting, Bormann bemoans his life in text messages to a girlfriend he left behind in South Dakota.
At 4:05 a.m. Jan. 20, the girlfriend sent a text to Bormann: "You just made me cry."
Bormann responded: "Well, me, too."
Bormann wrote that he was sorry but that he hadn't been "doing anything unfaithful to u."
He blamed his "(expletive)-up" life on his "careless actions and "horrible addictive personality."
"I hate it," he wrote. "And it really makes me sad. And look down on myself. I started to cry again."
"Kyle, I love you the way you r," the girlfriend responded. "It will be okay. We will get it all figured out. I still want to be wit u no matter wat u think."
Bormann sent no further messages to that girlfriend but, at 4:50 a.m., expressed dismay that he couldn't reach another friend.
"What the (expletive)?" he wrote. "Are u ever gonna answer my calls. I've been trying to call you for the last two days."
That text was Bormann's last before the shooting.
But it's clear from other text messages that he had phone contact with friends later that day.
One friend apologized for bugging him in the afternoon. At that point, Bormann had begun drinking whiskey as he watched the game in his father's home.
"Sorry for bothering you," the friend wrote. "I forgot Green Bay was playing."
The messages continued — and friends became irritated as Bormann didn't respond.
"(Expletive) call me," one friend wrote.
Sometime after 8 p.m., Bormann grabbed his camouflage coat and his hunting rifle and darted out the door — leaving his cell phone in his bedroom.
All the while, friends continued to pepper his phone with texts — oblivious to the ugliness Bormann was about to unleash.
"Are you watching the (game)," one friend wrote. "I kinda wanted to hang out."
That friend sent another message at 8:50 p.m. — just a few minutes after Bormann shot and killed Williams.
"Goodnight," she wrote.
She closed with a happy-face symbol.
Bormann, meanwhile, remained near the shooting scene — apparently watching police and rescue squads respond.
Soon after, he drove through crime-scene tape — and led police on a short chase.
When his car became stuck in the snow near the Florence Library, police closed in on him. He got out of his car with his rifle in hand but quickly dropped it and ran.
Officers easily caught up to him, arrested him and took him to jail.
His family and friends, meanwhile, were becoming anxious.
"You better call me as soon as you can," one friend wrote. "Your dad called me a bit ago and said he couldn't find you."
Those words — not just Bormann's, but the angst-filled responses of his friends — fit the picture of a young man whose life was on the decline, Kleine said.
In the nine months before the shooting, Bormann had dropped out of South Dakota State University after having used marijuana, alcohol and cocaine. After moving to live with his father in Ponca Hills in the summer of 2007, Bormann had been smoking pot and huffing from aerosol cans. He told a detective he had used a handgun to shoot squirrels outside his dad's home in the days before Williams' death.
It's possible that he was drunk and depressed when the ref's call acted as a "trigger" to Bormann's nonsensical actions, Kleine said.
"We may never know," Kleine said. "Certainly, he was having trouble dealing with whatever issues he had in life. Unfortunately, we can't open up his head and dissect his thoughts."
Prosecutors and Williams' family also have wondered what was on Bormann's computer, found melted in his father's fireplace a few days after the shooting. Was there hate propaganda? Racist material? A suicide note?
But Bormann's attorney, Douglas County Public Defender Tom Riley, noted that investigators found no evidence of racism or hate-group activity or violence in Bormann's past.
And Riley cautioned against reading too much into the texts.
Although Bormann had substance abuse issues in South Dakota, Riley said, he had moved to get away from drug-using friends. He loved his new job at a Fremont, Neb., electronics business — and had made friends there.
Riley said a psychiatrist evaluated Bormann and found no psychoses indicating that Bormann was suicidal or homicidal.
"Is there some element of depression going on there? I suspect so," Riley said. "His lonesomeness and his loneliness — that's what I'm hearing in those (texts).
"It didn't appear to us that there was anything in his (psychiatric) evaluations that would give us that type of defense."
If he had been suicidal, Riley pointed out, Bormann could have ensured his demise simply by pointing the rifle at police.
But why did he shoot Williams, if it wasn't out of racism or a deep-seated disorder?
Riley acknowledged "the complete absence of logic or reason for what happened" but said he believes his client acted out of drunken, immature impulse.
"I understand anyone's desire to search out a reason for this offense," Riley said. "How many times does a parent ask why a child does something really hurtful and really foolish, and the kid answers, 'I don't know'?
"Kyle has tremendous remorse for what he did. But I don't know that he could articulate why he did it."
As Bormann tried to explain himself to detectives hours after the shooting, another text rolled into his phone.
Shortly before 2 a.m., the friend who had been trying to track down Bormann sent him a final, frantic message.
"I've been really worried," she wrote.
"I don't want you to get hurt and do something you'll regret."
• Contact the writer: 444-1275, todd.cooper@owh.com
For 11 months, the question has hounded police, prosecutors and, most of all, Brittany Williams' family.
http://www.omaha.com/neo-images/photos/medium/0915lsbormann.jpg (javascript:enlargePhoto(317000))
Kyle Bormann
Why did Kyle Bormann snuff out Williams' life and throw away his own?
Neither Williams' family nor prosecutors have been convinced that Bormann shot Williams just because, as he told police, he was angry about a referee's call in an NFL game. And neither Bormann's attorney nor his relatives have been convinced that he targeted Williams, a black woman, in a racist rage — as prosecutors alleged.
Indeed, both sides may have reason for their skepticism.
Newly released text messages, retrieved from Bormann's cell phone by Omaha police, show that Bormann's motives may have run deeper than his dismay over a blown call and his actions may have been fueled more by self-loathing than by a loathing of black people.
The messages, sent hours before the Jan. 20 sniper shooting of Williams, paint a picture of a young man who was acting desperate and despondent even before his demented acts.
Bormann sent a few terse messages to a girlfriend about 4 a.m. Jan. 20 — some 16 hours before he tore out of his father's Ponca Hills home, drove into north Omaha, peered down the high-powered scope of his hunting rifle and shot Williams, 21, in a restaurant drive-through.
"I'm sorry about everything," he wrote in the messages, obtained this week by The World-Herald. "I've just realized lately how much everything is (expletive) up in my life and how much of it is my fault cause of my careless actions and horrible addictive personality."
The text messages have led authorities to wonder if Bormann, then 19, had designs on ending his own life — and on taking someone down with him.
Bormann's attorney denies that — attributing the texts to the "hyperbolic rants" of a teenager and the shooting to the drunken impulse of a young man.
But Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine said the text messages, the references to race and referees "are all pieces of the puzzle" in a puzzling case.
The court case came to a close Tuesday with Bormann's receiving 80 years to life in prison — and with Williams' mom, Sumalia Gunter, questioning why Bormann would target a woman he had never met.
Kleine and prosecutors have argued that Bormann killed Williams, a senior at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, because she was black. Hours after the shooting, Bormann told a detective, "I imagine I was pissed off at black people" because of a referee's call in an NFL playoff game involving Green Bay, his favorite team.
In the hours before the shooting, Bormann bemoans his life in text messages to a girlfriend he left behind in South Dakota.
At 4:05 a.m. Jan. 20, the girlfriend sent a text to Bormann: "You just made me cry."
Bormann responded: "Well, me, too."
Bormann wrote that he was sorry but that he hadn't been "doing anything unfaithful to u."
He blamed his "(expletive)-up" life on his "careless actions and "horrible addictive personality."
"I hate it," he wrote. "And it really makes me sad. And look down on myself. I started to cry again."
"Kyle, I love you the way you r," the girlfriend responded. "It will be okay. We will get it all figured out. I still want to be wit u no matter wat u think."
Bormann sent no further messages to that girlfriend but, at 4:50 a.m., expressed dismay that he couldn't reach another friend.
"What the (expletive)?" he wrote. "Are u ever gonna answer my calls. I've been trying to call you for the last two days."
That text was Bormann's last before the shooting.
But it's clear from other text messages that he had phone contact with friends later that day.
One friend apologized for bugging him in the afternoon. At that point, Bormann had begun drinking whiskey as he watched the game in his father's home.
"Sorry for bothering you," the friend wrote. "I forgot Green Bay was playing."
The messages continued — and friends became irritated as Bormann didn't respond.
"(Expletive) call me," one friend wrote.
Sometime after 8 p.m., Bormann grabbed his camouflage coat and his hunting rifle and darted out the door — leaving his cell phone in his bedroom.
All the while, friends continued to pepper his phone with texts — oblivious to the ugliness Bormann was about to unleash.
"Are you watching the (game)," one friend wrote. "I kinda wanted to hang out."
That friend sent another message at 8:50 p.m. — just a few minutes after Bormann shot and killed Williams.
"Goodnight," she wrote.
She closed with a happy-face symbol.
Bormann, meanwhile, remained near the shooting scene — apparently watching police and rescue squads respond.
Soon after, he drove through crime-scene tape — and led police on a short chase.
When his car became stuck in the snow near the Florence Library, police closed in on him. He got out of his car with his rifle in hand but quickly dropped it and ran.
Officers easily caught up to him, arrested him and took him to jail.
His family and friends, meanwhile, were becoming anxious.
"You better call me as soon as you can," one friend wrote. "Your dad called me a bit ago and said he couldn't find you."
Those words — not just Bormann's, but the angst-filled responses of his friends — fit the picture of a young man whose life was on the decline, Kleine said.
In the nine months before the shooting, Bormann had dropped out of South Dakota State University after having used marijuana, alcohol and cocaine. After moving to live with his father in Ponca Hills in the summer of 2007, Bormann had been smoking pot and huffing from aerosol cans. He told a detective he had used a handgun to shoot squirrels outside his dad's home in the days before Williams' death.
It's possible that he was drunk and depressed when the ref's call acted as a "trigger" to Bormann's nonsensical actions, Kleine said.
"We may never know," Kleine said. "Certainly, he was having trouble dealing with whatever issues he had in life. Unfortunately, we can't open up his head and dissect his thoughts."
Prosecutors and Williams' family also have wondered what was on Bormann's computer, found melted in his father's fireplace a few days after the shooting. Was there hate propaganda? Racist material? A suicide note?
But Bormann's attorney, Douglas County Public Defender Tom Riley, noted that investigators found no evidence of racism or hate-group activity or violence in Bormann's past.
And Riley cautioned against reading too much into the texts.
Although Bormann had substance abuse issues in South Dakota, Riley said, he had moved to get away from drug-using friends. He loved his new job at a Fremont, Neb., electronics business — and had made friends there.
Riley said a psychiatrist evaluated Bormann and found no psychoses indicating that Bormann was suicidal or homicidal.
"Is there some element of depression going on there? I suspect so," Riley said. "His lonesomeness and his loneliness — that's what I'm hearing in those (texts).
"It didn't appear to us that there was anything in his (psychiatric) evaluations that would give us that type of defense."
If he had been suicidal, Riley pointed out, Bormann could have ensured his demise simply by pointing the rifle at police.
But why did he shoot Williams, if it wasn't out of racism or a deep-seated disorder?
Riley acknowledged "the complete absence of logic or reason for what happened" but said he believes his client acted out of drunken, immature impulse.
"I understand anyone's desire to search out a reason for this offense," Riley said. "How many times does a parent ask why a child does something really hurtful and really foolish, and the kid answers, 'I don't know'?
"Kyle has tremendous remorse for what he did. But I don't know that he could articulate why he did it."
As Bormann tried to explain himself to detectives hours after the shooting, another text rolled into his phone.
Shortly before 2 a.m., the friend who had been trying to track down Bormann sent him a final, frantic message.
"I've been really worried," she wrote.
"I don't want you to get hurt and do something you'll regret."
• Contact the writer: 444-1275, todd.cooper@owh.com