Current Update
Suspect named in N.Illinois slayings
By CARYN ROUSSEAU and DEANNA BELLANDI, Associated Press Writers
DEKALB, Ill. - The gunman who killed six people in a Northern Illinois University lecture hall before committing suicide was identified Friday as 27-year-old former student Steven Kazmierczak, according to Florida authorities and a university official familiar with the investigation.
Polk County, Fla., sheriff’s officials said they were asked to notify the suspect’s father — Robert Kazmierczak of Lakeland, Fla. — of his son’s death.
“His son, Steven, was the shooting suspect at Northern Illinois University,” said Carrie Rodgers, spokeswoman for the sheriff’s office.
Illinois authorities have not confirmed the suspect’s identity, but a university official told The Associated Press it is the younger Kazmierczak. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the identity has not been officially released.
The motive of the killer was still not known, officials said. The gunman also wounded 15 people in Thursday’s attack, which sent panicked students fleeing for the exits.
“There is no note or threat that I know of,” NIU President John Peters said on Friday ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “By all accounts that we can tell right now (he) was a very good student that the professors thought well of.”
The shooter had been a graduate student in sociology at Northern Illinois as recently as spring 2007, but was not currently enrolled at the 25,000-student campus, Peters said. He also said the gunman had no record of police contact or an arrest record while attending the university, about 65 miles west of Chicago.
He was currently enrolled as a graduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said NIU spokeswoman Melanie Magara.
DeKalb County Coroner Dennis J. Miller released the identities of the four victims who died in his county: Daniel Parmenter, 20, of Westchester; Catalina Garcia, 20, of Cicero; Ryanne Mace, 19, of Carpentersville; and Julianna Gehant, 32, of Meridan.
Two other victims died after being transferred to hospitals in other counties, Miller said. Winnebago County Coroner Sue Fiduccia said a female victim died in her jurisdiction but has not been identified pending notification of family.
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.”
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.
“I personally Army-crawled halfway up the aisle,” said Carr, a 20-year-old 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 a hundred students cried and hugged as they gathered outside the Phi Kappa Alpha house early Friday to remember Parmenter, the 20-year-old sophomore from Elmhurst, who was one of those killed.
“I’m not angry,” his stepfather, Robert Greer, told the Tribune. “I’m just sad, and I know that right now what I need to do is comfort my wife.”
The 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. Peters said he knew of no connection between that incident and Thursday’s attack.
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Associated Press writers Carla K. Johnson, Michael Tarm, David Mercer, Martha Irvine, Nguyen Huy Vu, Sarah Rafi, Mike Robinson and photographer Charles Rex Arbogast contributed to this report.
Man kills 4, self at Northern Illinois
DEKALB, Ill. - A man dressed in black opened fire with a shotgun and two handguns from a stage of a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University on Thursday, killing four people and injuring several others before committing suicide, authorities said.
University Police Chief Donald Grady confirmed the deaths following a news conference, according to local newspapers.
It was not clear whether the dead victims were among the 18 people school President John Peters had reported as wounded. He wouldn’t confirm any fatalities other than the gunman.
Witnesses in the geology class said “someone dressed in black came out from behind a screen in front of the classroom and opened fire with a shotgun,” Peters said.
The gunman shot himself on the stage after a brief rampage that sent terrified students screaming, crying and running for the doors around 3 p.m.
“At this point I’m being told it was less than two minutes,” Grady said. “This thing started and ended in a matter of seconds.”
Grady said the gunman was not a student at the school. “It appears he may have been a student somewhere else,” he said, adding that police had no apparent motive.
Seventeen victims were brought to Kishwaukee Community Hospital in DeKalb, according to Theresa Komitas, a spokeswoman. Three were in extremely critical condition.
Five were airlifted to other hospitals, including a female with a chest injury and two other victims with head injuries. One patient there died, a male but not the shooter, Komitas said.
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.
“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.
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(CNN) — A person who shot at least 17 people Thursday at Northern Illinois University’s DeKalb campus outside Chicago has died, a law enforcement official tells CNN.
Many victims were shot in the head, said Theresa Comitas, spokeswoman for Kishwaukee Community Hospital, about 10 minutes from the school.
At least three victims are in critical condition, eight are in stable condition and six are in good condition, a hospital official tells CNN.
One of the wounded was transferred by helicopter to Rockford Hospital, she said. There were no fatalities at the hospital, she said.
According to the Chicago Tribune, the DeKalb County coroner’s office said no fatalities had been immediately reported.
At 4 p.m. (5 p.m. ET), the school said there was no further danger and that counselors would be made available.
A law enforcement official being briefed on the situation told CNN that the shooter used at least one shotgun. The official declined to be identified further because the incident was still developing.
Kevin Mcenery said he witnessed the shooting.
The gunman “just kicked the door open, just started shooting. All I really heard was just people screaming, yelling get out,” he said.
“Close to 30 shots were fired.”
“He was wearing a black shirt, dark pants, black hat. … He started with a shotgun, then turned to a pistol.”
Rosie Moroni, a student at the school, told CNN she was outside Cole Hall near the King Commons at 2:30 p.m. (3:30 p.m. ET) when she heard shots coming from the classroom she had intended to enter.
The shot was followed by “a lot of people screaming,” then people ran out the doors yelling, “He’s got a gun, call 9-1-1,” she said.
“It was complete chaos … it’s very scary here right now.”
“It has been confirmed that there has been a shooting on campus and several people have been taken away by ambulance,” the school said in the posting on its DeKalb campus Web site. “All classes are canceled on the DeKalb campus. People are urged not to come to campus.”
Friday classes also are canceled at the school’s DeKalb campus.
“All NIU students are asked to call their parents as soon as possible,” the school said in a posting.
The 113-year-old school is 65 miles west of downtown Chicago and has an enrollment of more than 25,000. The campus covers 755 acres.
A spokesman for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives told CNN that some of its agents were already on the scene to assist.
He said ATF agents could help trace the weapon or weapons used.
An FBI spokesman said several of that agency’s agents were en route to the scene to assist.
A woman named Corrine described the scene to CLTV, saying she was “carried out” of Cole Hall by a “wave” of students running for their lives.
“When one of the kids said, ‘This guy is shooting!’ I just ran to the next building as fast as I could and hid in an empty classroom.”1st update
A person who shot 13 people Thursday at Northern Illinois University’s DeKalb campus outside Chicago has died, local reports said.
Most of the 13 wounded were shot in the head, said Theresa Comitas, spokeswoman for Kishwaukee Community Hospital, located about 10 minutes from the school.
According to the Chicago Tribune, the DeKalb County coroner’s office said no fatalities had been immediately reported.
A local hospital tells CNN affiliate CLTV that it expects to receive 15 patients and has so far treated at least two.
CLTV reports that Kishwaukee Medical Center in DeKalb is treating six people with head wounds.
A woman named Corrine described the scene to CLTV, saying she was “carried out” of Cole Hall by a “wave” of students running for their lives.
“When one of the kids said, ‘This guy is shooting!’ I just ran to the next building as fast as I could and hid in an empty classroom.”
Officers responded to a call of shots fired on campus around 3 p.m., DeKalb County Sheriff Roger Scott told the Tribune.
A professor at the school said there was a person with a gun in Cole Hall, a large lecture hall in Watson Hall. Scott said it was possible the assailant may have taken his own life.
The university had ordered its student body to seek shelter, and it canceled classes Thursday.
“Its has been confirmed that there has been a shooting on campus and several people have been taken away by ambulance,” the school said in a posting on its DeKalb campus Web site. “All classes are canceled on the DeKalb campus. People are urged not to come to campus.”
A law enforcement official being briefed on the situation tells CNN that the shooter used at least a shotgun. The official declined to be identified further because the incident was still developing.
An spokesman with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives tells CNN that some of its agents are on the scene — strictly in an assistance role. He says one of the things ATF agents would do is help trace the weapon or weapons used. An FBI spokesman says several of that agency’s agents were also en route to the scene to assist.
DeKalb is 65 miles west of downtown Chicago and 45 minutes southeast of Rockford. Gunman opens fire at N. Illinois U.
DEKALB, Ill. - Northern Illinois University says there has been a shooting on campus and several people have been taken away by ambulance. University officials warned students on the school Web site to get to a safe area and “take precautions until given the all clear.”
The messages says everyone should avoid the King Commons and all buildings in that area.
Messages were left for university police and police in DeKalb, located about 65 miles west of Chicago.
