New York, Dec 8: Hawkins, the gunman who went on a shooting rampage in a US shopping mall on Wednesday afternoon killing eight people before shooting himself, said in a suicide note that he was “just snapped, ” adding that he did not want to “be a burden on the ones that I care for my entire life. ”

"I know everyone will remember me as some sort of monster but please understand that I just don't want to be a burden on the ones that I care for my entire life, " he said in the suicide note released on Friday.

"I just want to take a few pieces of (expletive) with me, " the New York Post quoted the letter, as saying, adding that that it combined love for his friends and family with contempt for his random victims.

Hawkins left the note Wednesday at the house where he lived, before he went to the Westroads Mall in Omaha and opened fire in the Von Maur store.

Chilling photos taken by surveillance cameras inside the mall show a crazed Hawkins taking careful aim during his bloody rampage, the daily said.

The pictures released by Omaha police show Hawkins entering the Von Maur department store, packed with holiday shoppers, shortly before he took out a and opened fire.

Meanwhile, new details about the 20-year-old gunman said that he spent four years in a series of treatment centres, group homes and foster care after threatening to kill his stepmother in 2002, according to State officials.

Acquaintances were quoted as saying that Hawkins was a drug user and that he had a history of depression. In 2005 and 2006, according to court records, he underwent psychiatric evaluations. (ANI)