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There was one other story that warranted attention from reporters at all three networks--the shooting spree at the Trolley Square shopping mall in downtown Salt Lake City. The murders were an aberration, noted NBC's Michael Okwu, since crime in the Utah city is at a 14-year low. An off-duty police officer confronted and killed the shotgun-pumping shooter, an 18-year-old Bosnian refugee, but only after five other people had already been killed in the six-minute rampage. CBS did not send a reporter to the scene so Sandra Hughes narrated footage of the carnage from Los Angeles, adding the colorful detail that the shooter was "dressed Columbine-style in a trenchcoat."
ABC's Brian Rooney tried to generalize from the incident by examining shopping mall security nationwide. He described the "vulnerability" of malls as "wide open to a rampaging gunman or to a planned terrorist attack." Improving security with metal detectors, armed guards, bag searches and dog patrols, as suggested by a recent RAND study, would be "very expensive and probably aggravating to customers."
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