The owner of the AK-47 used in Wednesday’s Von Maur killings was in Thailand during the shootings, Omaha police said.

Robert Hawkins took the gun from the Bellevue home of his vacationing stepfather, Mark Dotson, police spokesman Bill Dropinski said.

On Friday, a MySpace page belonging to Dotson showed him holding what appeared to be an AK-47.

The page showed a man named “Mark” holding the rifle across his chest. Omaha police wouldn’t say whether the rifle in the photo was the same used by Hawkins in his shooting spree.

Hawkins’ mother, Maribel “Molly” Rodriguez, and Dotson are divorced, but she and Hawkins had access to her ex-husband’s Bellevue home while he was away, Eric Dotson, Mark Dotson’s brother, told the Omaha World-Herald.

“It’s like a bad dream,” Eric Dotson said.

Hawkins apparently took the rifle from a closet and put it in his car while his mother was gone, he said.

It’s not known where Hawkins got two magazines of ammo.