we're following new developments in the columbia mall shooting. police releasing more information of what they found inside the personal journals of david aguilar, the suspected journal. >> police said he wrote in this gournls he was ready to die and take the lives of others. pat. >> reporter: jim, an incredible revelation. for about a year the columbia mall shooter thought about what he was going to do. in general terms he wrote about what he was going to do. he even included an apology in advance to his family for what he was going to do. tonight, troubling entries from aguilar's journal. he thought he needed help from a mental health professional but he never told his family. he expresses a general hatred for others and mentions killing

people in general terms. he expresses thoughts of wanting to die. he says he's ready to die. he says his plan is set but does not indicate what he's riveri 'g to. in the end, he jesapologys to h family about what he's going to do. the gun used by the shooter was a 12 gauge mossberg shotgun like this and can be broken down into pieces shorter than 18 inches. today, howard county police say they believe aguilar did just that to conceal the gun in his backpack so he could carry it into the mall. inside a dressing room at zumiez, he put together the shotgun and walked into the

store and shot at two employees, then turned the gun on himself. police say there's no camera in the store and no actual footage of the shooting in the store. today, i talked to keith vaughn. he works at zumys and said he would sometimes skateboard with aguilar and remembers aguilar hanging out at the mall. >> he comes in and out of the store. i don't remember him hanging out there. it's a mall. a lot of people come to the mall. >> reporter: you remember him? >> i saw his face, i skated with him before. >> reporter: when you heard about what happened, what did you make of it? >> it was upsetting. i woke up to a nightmare. >> reporter: a candlelight vigil for the victims tomorrow, 5:00 p.m., at the mall. live in columbia, pat collins, news 4. >> we just got the missing persons report for aguilar, filed with prince george's county police on the day of the

shooting. the person that filed it told officersing a d ing aggiuilar w at 5:15 sunday morning on his way to a duncan donut shop on baltimore avenue and never arrived. a reverse track was done to his cell phone and it led police to the columbia mall. president obama just returned to the white house after a visit to pittsburgh. he is halfway through a two-day swing in what he's calling his opportunity agenda. the president got that campaign style tour rolling with a stop at a costco tour in st. george's county and he called for congress to joining him in raising the minimum wage. >> reporter: mr. obama wants to be seen as moving beyond the permanent partisan warfare here on capitol hill to try to help american workers who are falling further behind unlike the workers he wasn't out to see today. president obama went to a costco

outside d.c. to push raising the minimum wage, one of his state of the union themes. >> if you work hard, you should be able to pay your rent, buy your groceries, look after your kids. >> reporter: he's ordering a hike to $10.10 for workers on new federal projects. >> while congress decides whether it's going to raise the minimum wage or not, people outside of washington are not waiting for congress and i'm not either. >> reporter: that's a new obama vow, to go it alone when he can to help the working class. here at costco, a lot of people favor that. >> reporter: you're not an o supporter but you like the idea of him taking action on his own? >> i do. the republicans after the whole gridlock mess, they've lost a lot of clout in my book. >> reporter: but some of those republicans are objecting. >> in america, we do have a

preside president, we don't have a king. >> reporter: but in pittsburgh, mr. obama signed another executive order setting up the new m.y.r.a. retirement bond and went to a steel plant to talk about that but republicans blame him for low wage workers doing worse. no unfortunately under the president's health care law we see more and more people being forced into part-time work, part-time economy. >> reporter: partisan battling, that's still full-time work in washington. republicans up here say they're still opposed to hiking the federal minimum wage. i'm steve handelsman, news 4. prince george's county voted to gradually raise its minimum wa wage. and governor martin o'malley is pushing for a statewide increase to $10.10 an hour. people who came to see the president said they agree with paying workers more. >> if you expect people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, you need to be able to equip them with the ability

to do it. >> it gives everyone an opportunity. that's what this country should stand for. >> reporter: many residents said they're glad the president chose prince george's county to make his pitch. >> new york congressman michael grimm apologized today to a reporter he threatened after last night's sta"state of the union" address. congressman grimm is from staten island and upset that a political reporter, michael scotto, asked him about an ongoing federal investigation into campaign fund-raising. today, grimm admitted he over reacted and called scotto to apologize. >> i'm a human being and sometimes your emotions get the better of you. bottom line, it shouldn't happen you shouldn't lose your cool and that's why i apologized. when you're wrong you're wrong and you have to admit it and it shouldn't happen. >> reporter: congressman grimm

attributed the outburst to a long day and fight over flood insurance that affects his constituents still recovering from superstorm sandy. the city is still paralyzed by the winter storm that moved yesterday and the city became gridlocked from thousands who were sent home at the same time and thousands forced to spend the night in their cars. students who didn't make it home on time slept on buses or stayed at schools overnight. there are nightmare stories of hours spent on the road. one woman said it took her 16 hours just to go 12 miles. wendy rieger is live at the live desk. >> a state of emergency is still on in atlanta and many drivers spent a second day stuck in their cars. these are live pictures over the city's highways, where crews have been helping stranded drivers all day. the state patrol says it's been called to investigate nearly

1,000 car accidents which resulted in about 100 injuries. the national guard has also been deployed to help people but with thousands stuck, a lot of drivers say it is slow going. >> i've been on the road since 4:00 p.m. yesterday trying to get home. >> reporter: where are you coming from? >> coming from the airport. it's been pretty pretty rough. total nightmare outer here. >> reporter: as some people face another night stuck behind the wheel the city and state are facing criticism for the slow response to this crisis. some grocery stores and schools opened their doors so stranded drivers could at least spend the night in a warm place while they waited for help. at the live desk, wendy rieger, back to you. >> thanks. the governor of georgia is blaming forecasters for the fiasco and even called the winter storm an unexpected event for the atlanta-metropolitan area. but the national weather service says there was a winter storm watch for south metro atlanta on

sunday afternoon. by monday night, that same area was under a winter storm warning. by 3:30 tuesday morning c the entire atlanta area was under a winter storm warning. today, the mayor of atlanta said if he could do it again, he would make sure students were home early so rush hour wouldn't have been so bad. >> if there were one major lesson learned in the middle of this challenge, that would be we need to stagger closings for private sector companies, for government and for the school system. >> police responded to nearly 800 crashes at the height of the storm. fortunately, no major injuries. our snow arrive as advertised last night. just pretty much what doug forecast. now, we're finally getting a little bit of a break, at least from the snow. not really from the cold. doug, when's it going to warm up? >> we will see a warm up the next couple of days.

that's probably the best news we have out there. take a look. we want to show you the radar yesterday. this is the storm making its way inside our area and atlanta area where the weather service did predict good amounts of snow in the metro area that received 2 1/2 inches. that same storm made its way towards our region. this is the snowfall around 6:00. the only difference to this map what we got, 1-3, waldorf and fredericksburg, over 4 towards southern maryland and coating to an inch in d.c., baltimore. i would have added chester and leesburg and frederick, you, too, had snow in your area. temperature-wise, we go down big-time tonight, already in the teens in some locations. i think we will end up near zero. then way up. >> thank you. the winter olympics in sochi just nine days away. today, the head of the olympics committee says the city is

ready. security is taking a high profile but a push to get ready for the competition. richard engel has a look inside the olympic park. >> reporter: the olympics in sochi are just over a week away. people are starting to arrive. the hotels are filling up. thousands more athletes and spectators are expected to come here over the weekend. security in the olympic park is quite tight. it's difficult to get in here. you have to go through layer after layer of security check. earlier today we toured some of the security infrastructure. we took a train that leads here to the olympic park and there were many volunteers there. russian officials say everything will be fine. security is not an overwhelming concern of theirs. instead, they want to focus on winning gold medals for the russian team. unlike many country, russia actually pays its athletes for medal, about 4 million rupels for a gold medal. $120,000, $75,000 for every silver medal and many also have

private sponsors who say they will pay more money for medals on top of that adding just a little more incentive. richard engel, nbc news, sochi. >> and jim handly is on his way to sochi right now and blogging on the behind the scenes action. you can following him on facebook or twitter @jimhandly. the major says he's outraged and emotional reactions to a man's death a few yards from the fire station. >> reporter: a bunch of new buildings are about to go right there over the 3rd street tunnel and you can see why that might be a transportation challenge coming up. dozens more people in dozens more people in maryland tell us the

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a suite of online tools that can now sync with popular accounting software, and turn seeing into doing. ♪ it's a story you're seeing first on 4. a major rebuild going up. between massachusetts tunnel and e street. adam is live with the details. >> reporter: let me set the scene. massachusetts avenue close to 2nd street and northwest. come to the 3rd street tunnel.

how will they do it? they put in beams, steel girder, columns here on the 3rd street tunnel, build on top of that and it could take four years. whatever you think about it the 3rd street tunnel is one of the more recognizable commuter routes in the district about to go through a major transformation. they will cover the tunnel, pulled a new base and put buildings on top of that. g and f streets across the tunnel to be reconnected. as one project official puts it, it will be like reknitting the city where it is a bunch of open space. >> the highway is in the trench for a reason. when they built the highway in the '60s, the idea is eventually it would be builtover. >> reporter: bob with the traffic said there will be traffic issues and lanes will

have to be shifted. >> there's a lot of room on the highway both sides and we can shift traffic around. speeds will go down but lanes stay open. >> reporter: the says at some point during the construction, the entire tunnel will have to be closed overnight. just the beechlams columns alon support this will cost a quarter of a billion dollars. when we told some commuters this will start in about a month, they weren't too happy to hear the news. >> reporter: can i tell you something else? it will start in about a month. >> oh, no. really? >> reporter: it will last 3 1/2 years. >> my god! >> this is why i don't drive in d.c. now. >> reporter: a 30 inch water main has to be dug up and drug along massachusetts avenue in this area an that will mean shifting lanes on massachusetts. >> reporter: near the 3rd street tunnel. see the capitol dome there? that is how close this project

is to capitol hill and all the tens of thousands of commuters who use this route impacting d.c., maryland and virginia. more coming up in the days and years ahead. reporting live northwest adam, news 4. >> thanks, adam. a very rare sight in virginia beach. that area is covered in 10 inches of snow. it is not unusual for folks down there to see snow and even get an inch or 2. but it has been years since they have had this much all at one time. as you can imagine, they don't have a lot of equipment to clear the roads so quickly down there, therefore schools and businesses were closed today and will be closed again tomorrow. >> that powerful storm hit southern maryland. about 5 inches of snow fell in dowel, maryland overnight. a photographer caught a snow plow clearing snow from the parking lot at

the royal caribbean cruise ship where hundreds of passengers got sick is back tonight. the centers for disease boarded the ship and believe the of the questions officials

want answered whether the 911 dispatcher deployeded the wrong firehouse confuse iing rhode isd northeasted with northwest. folks persons from the department issued this statement. our duty is to respond to all requests for emergency assistance. if it's determined that proper protocols were not followed at the conclusion of our investigation then appropriate action will be taken. several council members are demanding action and answers. >> my dad was a great guy. he did not deserve to go out like that in the city he loved. >> reporter: in the district, mark segraves, news 4. covering prince george's county, we have the letter from a student that ended up unconscious at an elementary school. the little girl was injured in the gym and the school is trying to figure out how it happened. the student was at recess yesterdayome who made the trip.

>> 12,000 people. 7,000 are children. they left their homes with little other than what they can carry or what was on their backs because their home government is shelling or bombing their community. >> it was heart tugging to see these individual, particularly the children in the situation they are living in. >> that trip was sponsored by the american turkish friendship association. a new push tonight in fall keir county, virginia to solve seven cold cases. they're asking the county for 600,000 dollars to pay for a cold case unit with four employees and help cover investigative grand jury costs. the county's unsolved homicides go back as far as 1981, up to 2012. just a short time ago the stepfather of one unsolved murder victim told us people don't understand how difficult that is to move on in life when there's no