From Deseret News archives:
Motive still a mystery as police finish Talovic probe
"I think it may have died with him," Salt Lake City Police Chief Chris Burbank said in an interview Sunday with the Deseret Morning News.
The report itself will not be made public for now, Burbank said. It will be used as part of the prosecution of four men charged in connection with the guns Talovic used to kill five people and wound four others inside the downtown Salt Lake City shopping mall on Feb. 12. Talovic died in a shootout with police.
However, Burbank said the report does not provide much more than has already been made public. The chief said that toxicology tests conducted during Talovic's autopsy revealed he was not on any drugs at the time of the murder spree.
Since the shooting, police have tried to learn everything they can about Talovic's life and what may have prompted him to kill on a massive scale. They tried to build a profile, based upon interviews with those who knew him. They examined the guns, his relationships, his life history in the United States and his native Bosnia.
All of that yielded nothing.
"It's a hard one for even the detectives to come to grips with," the chief said. "There just isn't any indicators of why he did what he did."
The only thing Burbank can theorize is that Talovic's violent childhood in war-torn Bosnia and his inability to assimilate into life in the United States somehow prompted him to kill.
"I think he had seen a lot of situations where human life had been devalued, and that's exactly the attitude it appears he had when he walked into Trolley Square," he said.
A child of war
Talovic spent part of his childhood in war-ravaged Bosnia, hiding in the mountains and moving from village to village, trying to hide from Serb forces that were killing Bosnian Muslims. It was a horrible war that resulted in the slaughter of thousands.
When he emigrated to the United States in 1998 at age 10, teachers and friends say, he was a "nice boy" who struggled desperately to fit in. He struggled with English, he struggled in school. Some say he was violent, lashing out and hurting other children, even earning himself a juvenile record.
In 2004, Talovic dropped out of school to begin working. He did construction for a while. A few weeks before the shooting, he landed a job at Aramark Uniform Services, where he would roll up freshly laundered floor mats for businesses. Co-workers said he would keep his head down, do his job, and leave.
Burbank said Talovic's life history may have built up to the Trolley Square killings.
