Omerovic said she believed the young man's mother had been living here for about four years. Omerovic was extremely distraught and at first said she did not speak English. But she did try to conduct an interview. She and a younger man went inside the home and left with a large cage with two birds in it.

"We want to know what happened, just like you guys," Omerovic told reporters. "We have no idea.... We know him as a good boy."

Asked what he was like, she replied, "He liked everybody, so I don't know what happened."

His mother is in "a difficult situation — she is very sick," she added.

A loner

Many neighbors said that while the mother and young girls were always pleasant and the girls often played with other neighborhood children, Talovic kept to himself.

"I don't even know that there is a man living there," said neighbor Yasmin Castellanos.

Castellanos said police and an ambulance arrived at the house about 5 a.m. Tuesday.

Neighbor Riana Yellowbear said the few times she'd see Talovic walk by, he would never say anything. Another neighbor, John Buddensick, said he also rarely ever saw Talovic.

"I never would have expected anything like that at all," he said. "He was really quiet. He'd just walk in and out."

One of Talovic's former teachers remembered him as a loner who "didn't have any friends in class."

"I just remember a quiet kid, " said Danny Schwam, Talovic's former ninth-grade teacher at the Highland High-Garfield alternative program. "He didn't cause any trouble. He was kind of unassuming. He never acted out."

Schwam said Talovic only came to school about half the time. When Schwam called his mother to discuss the repeated absences, he said, "I usually got, 'He's sick."'

"It's always these kinds of kids," Schwam said. "It's the kids who are distraught, who have nothing to live for...who cause the most severe damage. They don't know what else to do. In their mind, they're at the end of their rope."

The aftermath

Many people caught up in Monday night's shooting rampage are still trying to process what happened to them.

"I can't sleep, I just can't get it out of my head," said shopper Melanie Kenyon. "I try to sleep, but it's still there."

Kenyon said she was in Pottery Barn when she heard the shots and was quickly ushered into a back room inside the Restoration Hardware store.

"There was about 25 of us. We were pacing back and forth, talking on cell phones," she recalled. "We really didn't know what was going on."

After about 2 1/2 hours, police officers came and ushered Kenyon and others to safety.

"We all had to walk out with our hands in the air," she said.