Gunman opens fire at N. Illinois U. hall

omon · 02-14-2008, 20:21 PM

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, injuring as many as 18 people, four critically, before he killed himself, the school's president said.

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," according to school President John Peters.

Peters said he couldn't confirm any fatalities other than the gunman.

University Police Chief Donald 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.

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 victim 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.

"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.

this is really bad, something has to be done before this becomes too common, obviously school secyrity, and cops, can,t stop it from happening, what would?
my guess, someone with a gun in a right place at the right time.

dalem · 02-14-2008, 20:29 PM

How about parents doing their gorram jobs keeping track of their psycho spawn and getting them psychiatric help when needed?

-dale

omon · 02-14-2008, 20:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dalem

How about parents doing their gorram jobs keeping track of their psycho spawn and getting them psychiatric help when needed?

-dale

that might work too, however i doubt many parents will even admit to themselves let alone someone else, that their child is unstable, or sicko.
i think most psycho spawn, have parents that are the same way, or don,t care, or non excistant at all.
i think ppl like that shouldn,t be rehabed, i don,t think it even posible, there should be a clear mesage to everyone, you try something like that, you will be killed, not after you are done, but as soon as you start. no two ways about it.

Expat Canuck · 02-14-2008, 23:06 PM

My cousin tried to hang his brother, I saw that kid as an axe murderer when he was 3. That's what you get when you pump a 2 year old with ritalin.

The final straw that example in a long string of events. He is in an institute now, all he needed was a damn spanking too. The kid was so well behaved around my father and me as we didn't take his ****. The little bugger loved us too, all he needed was some damn disipline.....

At the end of the day it's almost always down to the parents.

Southie · 02-15-2008, 08:44 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Expat Canuck

My cousin tried to hang his brother, I saw that kid as an axe murderer when he was 3. That's what you get when you pump a 2 year old with ritalin.

The final straw that example in a long string of events. He is in an institute now, all he needed was a damn spanking too. The kid was so well behaved around my father and me as we didn't take his ****. The little bugger loved us too, all he needed was some damn disipline.....

At the end of the day it's almost always down to the parents.

Most definitely! I withdrew a student yesterday that was a real pain in the a$$. The mom seemed nice enough, but then I found out that she was also in the office to talk to the asst. prinicipal about her daughter that had been caught skipping! The majority of kids that act up at our school and also have a sibling here, we find that it runs in the family. And what does that tell you?

A couple years ago we were constantly having bomb threats called in to the county and we would have to evacuate the buildings so they could be checked. There was this one student that every time we evacuated we would see him grinning like a cheshire cat. Very evil looking and scared the crap out of us!

ShawnG · 02-15-2008, 09:24 AM

My girlfriend is a senior at Penn State, Harrisburg. It was discovered yesterday that a student there had been posting crap on his "Myspace" about shooting up PSU-Harrisburg. Messages were on his page for a full year before someone from IUP (Indiana University of Pennsylvania) was browsing webpages, saw his, and called the police.

Right after the VA Tech shooting a year ago, he was quoted on his Myspace as saying, "VA Tech is going to look like an amusement park compared to what I'm gonna do at Penn State Harrisburg."

This guy was attending classes with everyone! Finally a year later, they found out it was happening because someone actually reported it, they removed the guy from campus and he's being sentenced.

The school didn't do anything or tell anyone to do anything! Students went about business as usual.

They should have cancelled classes until they got the guy. Ridiculous. Now I have to worry about my girlfriend going to school. I told her last night that I want her to go ahead and get in a good cram session this weekend and graduate next week.

entropy · 02-16-2008, 08:18 AM

So the question now remains: how are you going to let lowlife parents do their jobs? The same way as the communists were going to make everyone honest?

THL · 02-16-2008, 19:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dalem

How about parents doing their gorram jobs keeping track of their psycho spawn and getting them psychiatric help when needed?

-dale

His parents did put him away when he got to the point that they could not manage him any longer. Not sure why the state would let him out. I dont know of a way to ensure that people who need medication indeed take that medication. It is difficult to force adults into treatment that they do not want.

While I do not lay all the blame with them, I am disappointed with the state in this case. They have some one here who had been in a mental institution at one point. In order to own guns in IL we have to get what is referred to as a FOID card (Firearm owners Identification). A form has to be filled out and sent in to the state police and they run a background check on that person. They should have found at that point that he had been in a mental institution. But I am sure there is some human rights group out there that said that they cannot access these medical records as they are CONFIDENTIAL. If we are going to have to go through these ropes, lets take it all the way. Run the background check and see if the person is a felon. See if they have been in an institution and get those records to see what the issue was.

Dekalb is a nice little college town about 45 minutes from where we live and it is a shame that these young people (man do I sound old) have to be going through this.

Update Linked Here

Quote:

DEKALB, Ill. - Steven Kazmierczak, at 27, looked like an average schoolboy — except that his arms were covered with disturbing images, including a doll from the horror movie "Saw."

Professors and students knew him as a bright, helpful scholar, but his past included a stint in a mental health center.

Many saw him as happy and stable, but he had developed a recent interest in guns and was involved in a troubled — possibly abusive — on-again, off-again relationship.

What people initially told police about the Northern Illinois shooter didn't add up, and now investigators are searching for answers to what triggered Thursday's bloody attack, in which five students were killed and several more injured before Kazmierczak committed suicide.

While searching for a motive, authorities questioned family and friends and tried to determine whether he had recently broken up with his longtime girlfriend.

One person who knew the couple, who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity, said the couple's relationship was on-again, off-again and "really rocky." Kazmierczak was controlling, she said.

"He was abusive, had a temper," she said. "He didn't actually hit her; he would push her around."

He also had a history of mental illness and had become erratic in the past two weeks after he stopped taking his medication, said university Police Chief Donald Grady.

A former employee at a Chicago psychiatric treatment center said Kazmierczak had been placed there after high school by his parents. He used to cut himself and had resisted taking his medications, she said.

Kazmierczak spent more than a year at the Thresholds-Mary Hill House in the late 1990s, former house manager Louise Gbadamashi told The Associated Press. His parents placed him there after high school because he had become "unruly" at home, she said.

Gbadamashi couldn't remember any instances of him being violent, she said.

"He never wanted to identify with being mentally ill," she said. "That was part of the problem."

Police went through the belongings he left at a DeKalb motel in search of clues.

Kazmierczak paid cash for his room three days before the shootings, signing his name only as "Steven" on a slip of paper, according to the hotel manager. Items later found in his room included empty cartons of cigarettes and discarded containers of energy drinks and cold medicine. The refrigerator was stocked with more energy drinks.

"It's scary," said Jay Patel, the manager at the Travelodge, where Kazmierczak was last seen before the attack.

Authorities found a duffel bag, with the zippers glued shut, that Kazmierczak had left in the room, said Lt. Gary Spangler of the DeKalb Police Department. A bomb squad safely opened the bag Friday, Spangler said.

He would not comment on what was found in the bag. The Chicago Tribune reported that investigators found ammunition inside, citing law enforcement sources.

Kazmierczak also left behind a laptop computer, which was seized by investigators, Patel told the AP on Saturday.

The discoveries added to the puzzles surrounding Kazmierczak, a graduate student who had once studied at Northern Illinois University but transferred to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

He also had a short-lived stint as a prison guard that ended abruptly when he didn't show up for work. He was in the Army for about six months in 2001-02, but he told a friend he'd gotten a psychological discharge.

Aaron Funsfinn, a friend who knew Kazmierczak at NIU, noted that Kazmierczak had become interested in guns in recent years, but said he wasn't alarmed by his friend's outspoken support for gun ownership.

"He was very rational and reasoned," said Funsfinn, 23.

Others who knew him also were baffled by the attacks, in which Kazmierczak stepped from behind a screen on the lecture hall's stage and opened fire on a geology class.

"Steve was the most gentle, quiet guy in the world. ... He had a passion for helping people," said Jim Thomas, an emeritus professor of sociology and criminology at NIU who taught Kazmierczak, promoted him to a teacher's aide and became his friend.

Kazmierczak's godfather, Richard Grafer, said Saturday that his godson told him he'd broken up with a girlfriend before Christmas. "He wasn't distraught," Grafer said.

"Then he said, 'We'll play chess and we'll talk.' And I said, 'Yeah, I'd love it,'" Grafer said. The conversation took place Tuesday, Grafer said, and Kazmierczak told his godfather he'd call him again Saturday.

"He seemed fine, great. We were laughing and talking and telling jokes."

He said he knew nothing about Kazmierczak being on or off medication.

On Feb. 9, Kazmierczak walked into a Champaign gun store and picked up two guns — a Remington shotgun and a Glock 9mm handgun. He bought the two other handguns at the same shop — a Hi-Point .380 on Dec. 30 and a Sig Sauer on Aug. 6.

All four guns were bought legally from a federally licensed firearms dealer, said Thomas Ahern, a spokesman for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. At least one criminal background check was performed — Kazmierczak had no criminal record.

Kazmierczak had a state police-issued FOID, a firearms owners identification card, which is required in Illinois to own a gun, authorities said. Such cards are rarely issued to those with recent mental health problems.

NIU President John Peters said Kazmierczak compiled "a very good academic record, no record of trouble" at the 25,000-student campus in DeKalb. He won at least two awards and served as an officer in two student groups dedicated to promoting understanding of the criminal justice system.

Kazmierczak (pronounced kaz-MUR'-chek) grew up in the Chicago suburb of Elk Grove Village. He was a B student at Elk Grove High School, where school district spokeswoman Venetia Miles said he was active in band and took Japanese before graduating in 1998. He was also in the chess club.

On the door of Kazmierczak's Champaign apartment, the building management posted a statement saying he had lived there since June 6, 2007. It called him a "a quiet resident who paid his rent, and did not otherwise come to the attention of the staff and management," at the apartment complex.

Nobody answered the door Saturday morning at the Urbana home of Kazmierczak's sister, Susan. But sobs could be heard through the door of the Urbana home, where a statement was posted:

"Our heartfelt prayers and deepest sympathies are extended to the families, victims, and all other persons involved in the Northern Illinois University tragedy. We are both shocked and saddened. In addition to the loss of innocent lives, Steven was a member of our family. We are grieving his loss as well as the loss of life resulting in his actions."

02-14-2008, 20:21 PM	#1 (permalink)
omon Field mechanik *Senior Contributor* Join Date: 11-01-06 Location: bk Posts: 2,058 Country:	Gunman opens fire at N. Illinois U. hall 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, injuring as many as 18 people, four critically, before he killed himself, the school's president said. 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," according to school President John Peters. Peters said he couldn't confirm any fatalities other than the gunman. University Police Chief Donald 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. 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 victim 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. "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. this is really bad, something has to be done before this becomes too common, obviously school secyrity, and cops, can,t stop it from happening, what would? my guess, someone with a gun in a right place at the right time. __________________ "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!" B. Franklin

02-15-2008, 09:24 AM	#6 (permalink)
ShawnG *Military Professional* Join Date: 01-03-08 Location: in the State of Denial Posts: 309 Country:	My girlfriend is a senior at Penn State, Harrisburg. It was discovered yesterday that a student there had been posting crap on his "Myspace" about shooting up PSU-Harrisburg. Messages were on his page for a full year before someone from IUP (Indiana University of Pennsylvania) was browsing webpages, saw his, and called the police. Right after the VA Tech shooting a year ago, he was quoted on his Myspace as saying, "VA Tech is going to look like an amusement park compared to what I'm gonna do at Penn State Harrisburg." This guy was attending classes with everyone! Finally a year later, they found out it was happening because someone actually reported it, they removed the guy from campus and he's being sentenced. The school didn't do anything or tell anyone to do anything! Students went about business as usual. They should have cancelled classes until they got the guy. Ridiculous. Now I have to worry about my girlfriend going to school. I told her last night that I want her to go ahead and get in a good cram session this weekend and graduate next week. __________________ "Patriotism is not short, frenzied outbursts of emotion, but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime." -Adlai E. Stevenson

02-16-2008, 08:18 AM	#7 (permalink)
entropy Senior Reader *Senior Contributor* Join Date: 03-19-07 Location: Belgium Posts: 1,628 Country:	So the question now remains: how are you going to let lowlife parents do their jobs? The same way as the communists were going to make everyone honest? __________________ If memory serves...

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02-14-2008, 20:29 PM	#2 (permalink)
dalem Lord High Hullabalooster *Senior Contributor* Join Date: 11-23-04 Location: Columbia Heights, MN Posts: 8,731 Country:	How about parents doing their gorram jobs keeping track of their psycho spawn and getting them psychiatric help when needed? -dale

02-14-2008, 23:06 PM	#4 (permalink)
Expat Canuck Homesick Fool *Military Professional* Join Date: 05-17-05 Location: Melbourne, Australia Posts: 1,020 Country:	My cousin tried to hang his brother, I saw that kid as an axe murderer when he was 3. That's what you get when you pump a 2 year old with ritalin. The final straw that example in a long string of events. He is in an institute now, all he needed was a damn spanking too. The kid was so well behaved around my father and me as we didn't take his ****. The little bugger loved us too, all he needed was some damn disipline..... At the end of the day it's almost always down to the parents.

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