By ALMIR ARNAUT
The Associated Press
Thursday, February 15, 2007; 3:21 PM

TALOVICI, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- Relatives of the Bosnian teen who shot and killed five people in a Salt Lake City mall said the boy's early life was marked by war and upheaval: The family fled Serb forces on foot when he was 4 and his grandfather was killed in the war.

Sulejman Talovic was a toddler when fighting broke out in Bosnia in 1992. Serb troops laid siege to the hamlet of Talovici in northeastern Bosnia, bombing it for a year before overrunning his home village in March 1993.

"We were besieged and bombed day and night. We couldn't stick our noses out of the house," Talovic's cousin, Redzo Talovic, 59, recalled Thursday.

"At first we all hid from the shells, but later we gave up on life, didn't care and started coming out. That's how ... the shelling killed 20 people in the village," he said.

Young Sulejman, his three siblings, his mother Sabira and grandfather made the difficult journey on foot to Srebrenica, while his father, Suljo, hid in the mountains with other men from the village, relatives said.

"Many left the village, only a few made it," said Murat Avdic, 54, a family friend.

Srebrenica was besieged, bombed and crowded with hungry Muslim families like the Talovics. One of the bombs killed Sulejman's grandfather.

"Those were really nice people, never argued with anybody about anything. During the war, they shared the little food they had with others," said Sefko Talovic, 59, a distant relative. "His father helped other injured people flee when the village fell, although he himself was injured too," he said.

Later that year, Sabira Talovic and the four children were among the displaced rescued by the U.N. They made their way to the government-controlled town of Tuzla, impoverished but safe.

"I remember they arrived in 1993 on an overloaded U.N. truck and settled here in an empty house the owner had left," said former neighbor Zijad Cerkic.

"They were very poor, they had lost everything, but they were very nice and quiet people," Cerkic said, recalling the young Sulejman as "a good child, always with a smile on his face."

Sulejman's father narrowly survived the 1995 massacre in Srebrenica of some 8,000 Muslim men and boys by Serb forces loyal to then-Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic. The massacre of civilians was Europe's worst since World War II.

The family reunited in Tuzla later that year when a peace agreement brought an end to the war. But the accord divided the country, putting their native Talovici under Serb control _ and they did not dare return, relatives said.

They made their way to Zagreb, Croatia, where they obtained Croatian citizenship. In 1998, they joined relatives already living in Utah. They created new lives for themselves in Salt Lake City, relatives said.

"I spoke to his father on the phone almost every month since they left to the United States, and he said for the first time they have a decent life, they have a home, jobs and they were happy," said Redzo Talovic.

On Monday, 18-year-old Sulejman Talovic _ described by his Utah neighbors as a loner who always dressed in black _ opened fire at a shopping mall, killing five people and wounding four before being shot dead by police.

The news came as a shock to his extended family back in Talovici.

"When I heard his name on TV, I fainted. I still can't believe what he did," said a cousin, Mina Talovic, 54. "I remember him as a happy little boy sitting in my lap."

"Not in my wildest dreams could I have presumed Sulejman killed those people. When I heard his name, I fell from the sofa," Redzo Talovic said.

"What got into him? This is what we are all asking ourselves. We are all in shock," he said.

Avdic speculated the teen had been traumatized by what he saw and experienced as a child of war. Up to 200,000 people were killed in the 1992-95 war in Bosnia, and 1.8 million others lost their homes.

"I'm convinced the war did this," Avdic said of the rampage in Utah. "There cannot be any other reason."

Relatives described a clan scarred and scattered by a war that destroyed their lives and kept them far from home. Most of the homes in Talovici remain in ruins, including the house Sulejman Talovic's father built a year before the war broke out.

Most of the 30 original families living in Talovici fled _ going to Switzerland or the U.S., said Sefko Talovic.

"Nobody even thought of returning to Serb land," he said. "Only in 2000, a few of us visited Talovici for the first time. Everything was burned and destroyed."

In 2003, eight families returned to the village and fixed up their homes _ and Sulejman Talovic's family talked about doing the same, relatives said.

"We are all dismayed. We are having a hard time connecting that horrible act with the little smiling boy we remember," Redzo Talovic said.