From Deseret News archives:
A child of violence: Talovic survived genocide
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Years later, the 18-year-old slaughtered five people in Salt Lake City's Trolley Square mall before dying in a shootout with police officers.
"I know all Talovic family," said Omer Johic, who was a neighbor of the Talovic family in the Bosnian village of Cerska, near Srebrenica. "Everybody are nice, quiet and fine people, and I just cannot believe that Sulejman has been able to kill those people."
But neighbors also acknowledged that the war in Bosnia likely left its mark on the boy. During the war, the family lived for five years as refugees in Bosnia and spent almost a year in the mountains hiding from the Serb military forces, neighbors said.
Up to 200,000 people were killed and 1.8 million others lost their homes in Bosnia's 1992-95 war.
"I don't know what happened in USA," Johic said. "Maybe he started to use the drugs."
"What happened to Sulejman, we have no idea," said his aunt, Ajka Omerovic. "He was nice boy."
Speaking to reporters in broken English, Omerovic offered condolences to the families of the people who Talovic killed.
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