Gunman opens fire in lecture hall in Dekalb, IL

[trekz 7]

DEKALB, Ill. (Feb. 14) - A man dressed in black opened fire with a shotgun from a stage of a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University on Thursday, killing four people and injuring 14 others before he killed himself, police and school officials said.

 

A gunman opened fire Thursday in a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University. Four people were fatally wounded before the shooter took his own life, officials said. Another 14 people were injured.

 

University President John Peters said witnesses "say someone dressed in black came out from behind a screen in front of the classroom and opened fire with a shotgun."

 

The university had issued a statement on its Web site about an hour after the 3 p.m. shooting that "the immediate danger has passed. The gunman is no longer a threat."

 

Kishwaukee Community Hospital spokeswoman Theresa Komitas told WLS-TV in Chicago it received 17 victims all with wounds from the shooting or flying debris, including three with serious injuries. One was airlifted to another hospital.

 

George Gaynor, a senior geography student, who was in Cole Hall when the shooting happened, told the student newspaper the Northern Star that the shooter was "a skinny white guy with a stocking cap on."

 

He described the scene immediately following the incident as terrifying and chaotic.

 

"Some girl got hit in the eye, a guy got hit in the leg," Gaynor said outside just minutes after the shooting occurred. "It was like five minutes before class ended too."

 

Witnesses said the young man carried a shotgun and a pistol. Student Edward Robinson told WLS that the gunman appeared to target students in one part of the lecture hall.

 

"It was almost like he knew who he wanted to shoot," Robinson said. "He knew who and where he wanted to be firing at."

 

Jillian Martinez, a freshman from Carpentersville, told the Chicago Tribune she was in the auditorium when the gunman entered through a door to the right of the lectern and opened fire about 3 p.m. "He just started shooting at all the kids," she said. "He just started shooting at people, and I ran out of there as fast as I could. I ran all the way to the student center; when I got there I could still hear shooting (from the classroom).

 

Agents with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were assisting local authorities at the scene, spokesman Thomas Ahern told the Chicago Tribune.

 

He said he did not know whether the shooter was a student or what his motive might have been.

 

"We will be urgently tracing the firearms and learning the history of the weapons," Ahern said.

 

All classes were canceled Thursday night and the 25,000-student campus was closed on Friday. Students were urged to call their parents "as soon as possible" and were offered counseling at any residence hall, according to the school Web site.

 

The school was closed for one day during final exam week in December after campus police found threats, including racial slurs and references to shootings earlier in the year at Virginia Tech, scrawled on a bathroom wall in a dormitory. Police determined after an investigation that there was no imminent threat and the campus was reopened.

 

The shooting was the fourth at a U.S. school within a week.

 

On Feb. 8, a woman shot two fellow students to death before committing suicide at Louisiana Technical College in Baton Rouge. In Memphis, Tenn., a 17-year-old is accused of shooting and critically wounding a fellow student Monday during a high school gym class, and the 15-year-old victim of a shooting at an Oxnard, Calif., junior high school has been declared brain dead.

 

 

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. AOL. 2008-02-14 17:10:43

[TJ Phaserman 2]

the hard part is i have to wait and see if my friends were the among dead or injured....<_<

[stvoyagerfan 1]

this brings up memories for me. 7 yrs ago when i was a senior in high school. someone brought guns and bombs to school. my school almost ended up like that college. luckily it was thwarted or i might not be here right now. it was valentine's day 2001.

 

my heart, thoughts and prayer goes out to all those who were affected.

 

tm

[Kor37 9]

This type of thing is getting way too frequent. More evidence of the decay of our civilization.....

[trekz 7]

UPDATE:

 

College shooter stopped taking his medications

Kazmierczak, 27, was recently erratic; he had 4 weapons, including shotgun

AP

 

Gunman kills 5 in campus attack

Feb. 15: Witnesses say an ex-student at Northern Illinois University emerged from behind a screen in a science class and, without a word, opened fire. NBC’s Kevin Tibbles reports.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Updated 2 minutes ago

DEKALB, Ill. - The man who gunned down five people at Northern Illinois University in a suicidal rampage became erratic after halting his medication and carried a shotgun to campus inside a guitar case, police said Friday.

 

The man, 27-year-old former student Stephen Kazmierczak, was also wielding three handguns during Thursday's ambush inside a lecture hall.

 

Two of the weapons — the pump-action Remington shotgun and a Glock 9mm handgun — were purchased legally less than a week ago, on Feb. 9, authorities said. They were purchased in Champaign, where Kazmierczak was enrolled at the University of Illinois.

 

The other weapons were still being traced.

 

Gunman's father

The gunman's father, Robert Kazmierczak, briefly came out of his house in Lakeland, Fla., to talk to reporters.

 

"Please leave me alone. ... This is a very hard time for me," he said as he threw his arms up and wept. He declined further comment about his son and then went back inside his house, saying he was diabetic.

 

Campus Police Chief Donald Grady said investigators recovered 48 shell casings and six shotgun shells following the attack in Cole Hall. The gunman paused to reload his shotgun after opening fire on a crowd of terrified students in a geology class, sending them running and crawling toward the exits. He shot himself to death on the stage of the hall.

 

Kazmierczak, whose first name was earlier listed as Steven, was taking some kind of medication, Grady said.

 

"He had stopped taking medication and become somewhat erratic in the last couple of weeks," Grady said, declining to name the drug or provide other details.

 

Miscommunication and unknown motive

Correcting information his office released earlier Friday, DeKalb County Coroner Rusty Miller said five students, not six, were killed in the rampage, in addition to the gunman. Miller said the higher victim total was the result of confusion over the fate of a patient taken to another county for treatment.

 

"There was a miscommunication," Miller said.

 

The motive of the killer, who graduated from NIU in 2006 but was a student there as recently as last year, was still not known. Grady said Kazmierczak was an "outstanding" student while at NIU and authorities were still trying to determine why he would kill. There was no known suicide note.

 

"We were dealing with a disturbed individual who intended to do harm on this campus," NIU President John Peters said.

 

Witnesses said the gunman, dressed in black and wearing a stocking cap, emerged from behind a screen on the stage of 200-seat Cole Hall and opened fire just as the class was about to end around 3 p.m. Officials said 162 students were registered for the class but it was unknown how many were there Thursday.

 

Allyse Jerome, 19, a sophomore from Schaumburg, said the gunman burst through a stage door and pulled out a gun.

 

"Honestly, at first everyone thought it was a joke," Jerome said. Everyone hit the floor, she said. Then she got up and ran, but tripped. She said she felt like "an open target."

 

"He could've decided to get me," Jerome said. "I thought for sure he was gonna get me."

 

John Giovanni, 20, of Des Plaines said the gunman calmly fired at the greatest concentration of students.

 

'Shooting from the hip'

"He was shooting from the hip. He was just shooting," said Giovanni, who turned and ran so fast that he lost a shoe. "I was running but I was hurtling over people in the fetal position."

 

Peters said four people died at the scene, including three students and the gunman. Others died at the hospital. The teacher, a graduate student, also was wounded but expected to recover.

 

DeKalb County Coroner Dennis J. Miller released the identities of four victims: Daniel Parmenter, 20, of Westchester; Catalina Garcia, 20, of Cicero; Ryanne Mace, 19, of Carpentersville; and Julianna Gehant, 32, of Meridan.

 

Another victim, Gayle Dubowski, a 20-year-old sophomore from Carol Stream, died at a Rockford hospital, Winnebago County Coroner Sue Fiduccia said.

 

The killer had been a graduate student in sociology at Northern Illinois as recently as spring 2007, Peters said. He also said the suspect had no record of police contact or an arrest record while attending Northern Illinois, a campus with 25,000 students about 65 miles west of Chicago.

 

The gunman was a student at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, Chancellor Richard Herman said.

 

'Army-crawled'

Lauren Carr said she was sitting in the third row when she saw the shooter walk through a door on the right-hand side of the stage, pointing a gun straight ahead.

 

Information for families

Northern Illinois University has set up the following numbers for relatives of NIU students to call for information:

— 815-753-1573

— 815-753-6143

— 815-753-1574

— 815-753-1575

— 815-753-9564

 

"I personally Army-crawled halfway up the aisle," said Carr, 20, a sophomore. "I said I could get up and run or I could die here."

 

She said a student in front of her was bleeding, "but he just kept running."

 

"I heard this girl scream, 'Run, he's reloading the gun!'"

 

More than 100 students cried and hugged as they gathered outside the Phi Kappa Alpha house early Friday to remember sophomore Parmenter.

 

The campus was closed on Friday. Students were urged to call their parents and were offered counseling at any residence hall, according to the school Web site.

 

The school was closed for one day during final exam week in December after campus police found threats, including racial slurs and references to shootings earlier in the year at Virginia Tech, scrawled on a bathroom wall in a dormitory. Police determined after an investigation that there was no imminent threat and the campus was reopened. Peters said he knew of no connection between that incident and Thursday's attack.

 

2008 The Associated Press.

[Theunicornhunter 2]

I wonder what sort of medication he was taking and if it really had any effect on his behavior. If that is the case - then I wonder how long we'll go before somebody decides to do something about medicated the dangerously mentally ill.

 

By that I mean, usually a person will take their meds - start feeling great and then stop taking them - and then things aren't so great anymore. We operate under the idea that no one can force anyone to take medication - and I agree that is a disturbing scenario. But, when people are a threat to society - we need to find some way to regulate their medication or we'll continue to see instances like this. (if this is indeed related to not taking medicine which isn't necessarily clear from what we've been given)