Profiles of 8 who died in Omaha mall massacre

updated 8:20 p.m. ET Dec. 6, 2007

OMAHA, Neb. - A look at the eight victims who died in Wednesday’s shooting at the Westroads Mall in Omaha, Neb.

'My Dudley-do-right'

Ho / AP Gary Scharf

Gary Scharf was on his way home to Lincoln after a business trip in Iowa when he stopped at the Von Maur store.

“I’m sure he got in front of other people” and took a bullet that might have hit someone else, said his ex-wife, Kim Scharf. “There’s no doubt in my mind, I promise you. That’s who he is, to a fault.”

Scharf, 48, sold agricultural products and was devoted to helping people, she said. Recently he helped a single mom get her car started, then got her address and delivered a package of groceries and blankets to her doorstep, she said.

“I called him my Dudley-do-right,” Kim Scharf said. “I’m not kidding. You’d never meet a more honorable and loyal man.”

Raised in a small Nebraska town, Gary Scharf graduated from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Kim Scharf said the couple divorced about three years ago, but “he followed me out of divorce court and said we’d remarry in six months.” They saw each other every day and were planning to get married.

She planted a rose for each success

AP Beverly Flynn

Beverly Flynn, a gift wrapper at the Von Maur, also had been a real estate agent for NP Dodge Co. since last year.

Whenever she closed a deal, the 47-year-old Omaha woman planted a rose bush in the yard of the new homeowners as a move-in gift, company spokeswoman Susan Young said.

“That was her way to put her style on the whole transaction,” Young said. “She was a very warm individual.”

Shot in the chest, Flynn was taken to Creighton University Medical Center, where attempts to resuscitate her failed.

“All we know is that a fine human being has been taken from us prematurely, and that she and the other victims will be greatly missed,” said Sandy Dodge, president of NP Dodge, in a letter to employees.

Two sisters torn apart

Ho / AP Angie Schuster

Angie Schuster had planned to teach elementary school after graduating from college, but when she couldn’t find a job in the field, she started working in retail, said her older sister, Donna Kenkel.

Schuster, 36, of Omaha, was a manager in the girls department at Von Maur, where she had worked for nearly 10 years, Kenkel said. The department is near the third-floor elevator, which Kenkel said meant “she probably didn’t have any chance, any warning” against the gunman.

“They said he got off the elevator, and she would have been right there in his way,” she said.

The sisters were born 11 months apart and lived about a mile from each other. They last saw each other Sunday, at a child’s birthday party at the Omaha zoo.

“She was in a very happy place in her life. She met a man,” Kenkel said. “They were so happy.”

'She was middle-of-the-road American'

Ho / AP Dianne Trent

Dianne Trent, a store employee, spent warm evenings tending to the flowers on her porch, drinking tea and chatting with her neighbor, Errol Schlenker.

“A very incredibly sweet person,” Schlenker said. “She was a middle-of-the-road American, a dedicated worker. She was just a decent person who lived a good life here.”

Divorced many years ago and with no children, Trent, 53, lived in a northwest Omaha town house with a small dog and two cats, Schlenker said.

“She called me a couple times when she was afraid of something, when she heard noises outside,” he said. “I know she was always concerned about her safety as far as the way things were going in society and being a single woman.”

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