Sulejman Talovic managed to escape the brunt of the war in his native Bosnia as a child, but his life ended this week in violence of his own making.
    After killing five people and shooting four others Monday at Trolley Square, Talovic, 18, died in a shootout with Salt Lake City police officers.
    While it may remain a mystery how the horrors of war in Bosnia touched Talovic's life, those experiences - physical and psychological - are part of what many young refugees must deal with in adapting to new lives in the United States.
    "Most of these kids and families were exposed to violence over there," said Steven Weine, a psychiatrist at the University of Illinois at Chicago. "That has its consequences."
    Talovic's family moved to the United States in 1998, five years after they were forced from their home in eastern Bosnia.
    "A lot of refugee children have lived in extremely insecure, unsafe environments beginning at birth," said Richard Mollica, a psychiatrist with the Harvard Center for Refugee Trauma.
    And those families who led comfortable, middle class lives in pre-war Bosnia often found themselves at the bottom of the heap in the United States, living in poor neighborhoods and settling for low-wage jobs.
    There also can be lingering consequences that can affect parents as they raise their families and, for their children, the deep discomfort of having to navigate in a strange new culture.
    "A lot of kids find themselves in new situations, in very American situations that their parents have no idea about," such as teens wanting their own car, Weine said.
    "One of our concerns is how much monitoring and support [refugee] parents are able to provide teenagers," he said.
    In some cases, because kids often know English better than their parents, the children take on adult roles to help the family, said Anne Taverne, a psychologist with Primary Children's Medical Center who also volunteers with the Utah Health and Human Rights Project.
    But in trying to fit in with their peers by being more American, teens may come into conflict with parents who want their kids to embrace the traditional values of their homeland.
    While refugee teenagers often quickly adjust to looking and acting like their American counterparts, "that doesn't mean that deep inside they have really adapted to American society," Mollica said.
    glavine@sltrib.com