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Gunman opens fire on Illinois campus
Shooter dead; 16 people reported injured, three with head wounds


BREAKING NEWS
NBC News and MSNBC
updated 25 minutes ago
DEKALB, Ill. - A gunman opened fire Thursday in a packed lecture hall on the campus of Northern Illinois University, wounding as many as 16 people, police and witnesses said. Police said the gunman was dead.

Police reported that the scene was secure and that the gunman was “no longer a threat” about an hour after the shooting, which occurred about 4 p.m. ET in Cole Hall. It was not immediately clear whether the man committed suicide or was killed by police.

Three people with head wounds were being treated at Rockford Medical Center, while Kishwaukee Community Hospital it had received 13 patients. Further information on their conditions was not available.

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3 p.m.: Officers respond to a call of shots fired on campus, according to DeKalb County Sheriff Roger Scott.

3:20 p.m.: A message appears on the NIU Web site that reads: "There has been a report of a possible gunman on campus. Get to a safe area and take precautions until given the all clear. Avoid the King Commons and all buildings in that vicinity."

3:50 p.m.: Another message on the NIU Web site says "several people" have been taken away by ambulance.

3:50 p.m.: Three or four victims with head wounds arrive at Kishwaukee Community Hospital. The hospital reports that it expects up to 15 victims.

4:10 p.m.: Campus police report that the scene is secure. Only essential personnel should remain on campus.

4:14 p.m.: Campus police report that the immediate danger has passed and the gunman is no longer a threat.

4:24 p.m.: Campus police reiterate that the immediate danger has passed and request that students return to their residence halls and stay there. All classes are canceled and all NIU campuses are closed for Thursday night and Friday.

4:31 p.m.: All NIU students are asked to call their parents as soon as possible.

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DEKALB, Ill. - If there is such a thing as a profile of a mass murderer, Steven Phillip Kazmierczak didn't fit it: outstanding student, polite and industrious, with what looked like a bright future in the criminal justice field.

And yet on Thursday, Kazmierczak, armed with three handguns and a brand-new pump-action shotgun he had carried onto campus in a guitar case, stepped from behind a screen on the stage of a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University and opened fire on a geology class.

He killed five students and then himself in a lecture hall where he himself had once helped teach a class.

University Police Chief Donald Grady said, without giving details, that Kazmierczak, 27, had become erratic in the past two weeks after he had stopped taking his medication. But that seemed to come as news to many of those who knew him, and the attack itself was positively baffling.

"We had no indications at all this would be the type of person that would engage in such activity," Grady said. He described the gunman as a good student during his time at NIU, and by all accounts a "fairly normal" person.

Exactly what set Kazmierczak off — and why he picked his former university and that particular lecture hall — remained a mystery. Police said they found no suicide note.

Authorities were searching for a woman who police believe may have been Kazmierczak's girlfriend. According to a law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the case is still under investigation, said investigators were looking into whether Kazmierczak and the woman recently broke up.

Investigators learned that a week ago, on Feb. 9, Kazmierczak walked into a Champaign, gun store and picked up two guns — the 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, an agency spokesman. At least one criminal background check was performed. Kazmierczak had no criminal record.

Kazmierczak had a State Police-issued 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. The application asks: "In the past five years have you been a patient in any medical facility or part of any medical facility used primarily for the care or treatment of persons for mental illness?"

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An Army veteran who served in Bosnia and Korea. An ad salesman for the student newspaper. An aspiring teacher. A talented violinist.

Poignant portraits began to emerge Friday of the five young lives that were cut short in a hail of gunfire Thursday when Steven Phillip Kazmierczak unleashed his rage inside a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University.

The victims, all from hometowns in Illinois, were identified Friday by area coroners as Gayle Dubowski, 20, of Carol Stream; Catalina Garcia, 20, of Cicero; Julianna Gehant, 32, of Mendota; Ryanne Mace, 19, of Carpentersville; and Daniel Parmenter, 20, of Westchester.

Garcia loved working with children and was studying to be a teacher, family members told the Chicago Sun-Times. “She was adored by our family because she wanted to become somebody in life — that’s why she was going to school,” Jacinto Garcia, her father, said in an interview with Evanston, Ill., radio station WOJO-FM. A 2006 graduate of Morton East High School in Cicero, Garcia worked on the school yearbook and belonged to a dance group. She had just visited the family’s home in the southwest Chicago suburbs before returning to the Northern Illinois campus on Saturday.

Parmenter, was a sophomore finance major, according to the Northern Star, the university’s student-run newspaper. Parmenter worked in the Northern Star’s business department, selling advertising. According to the Argus Press Spectator of Villa Park, he was a graduate of York Community High School in Elmhurst. He played rugby and was hoping to intern at the Chicago Board of Trade this summer, the newspaper said.

'He took care of everybody'
"He was one of our most wonderful kids," newspaper adviser Maria Krull told the Chicago Tribune. "He took care of everybody. He was prompt, smart and very attentive. I could depend on him for everything."

Relatives said Gehant recently retired from active duty with the U.S. Army, where she had attained the rank of staff sergeant after 12 years in which she was stationed in Hawaii, Bosnia, Japan and Korea. “We told her not to re-enlist, just come home,” Gehant’s aunt, Tina Pocius, told the LaSalle, Ill., News Tribune.

Christine Benson, a teacher at Mendota High School in northern Illinois, from which Gehant graduated in 1994, recalled her as an artistic student who sang in the school’s choir for four years, according to the newspaper. Gehant also planned to become a teacher.

"I told her I wanted to be one of the first ones to give her a recommendation" for the job, said Retired drama teacher Dave Schroeder. "It's just a terrible loss."

Mace was a 2006 graduate of Dundee-Crown High School in Carpentersville in Kane County, Ill., about 35 miles northwest of Chicago. In an interview with the Daily Herald, Mark Bettcher, the high school’s musical director who had known Mace since she was in the sixth grade, recalled her as a gifted violinist who had a lively sense of humor and was very popular with fellow students. “She was really funny, always going back and forth joking wise," he said.

Her mother, Mary Kay Mace, told the Daily Herald that the young woman “was the best kid anyone could hope for. She would never cause a second of trouble. Everybody loved her."

Dubowski was a sophomore anthropology major at NIU. She was from the Chicago suburb of Carol Stream, Ill. "She was a good person with a big heart," said a friend, Kelly Cavanaugh, who met her at the DeKalb Church of Christ.

Dubowski graduated from Glenbard North High School in 2006 where she sang in the choir, said Principal John Mensik.

Amanda Kent, 21, a fellow NIU student, said she was in Dubowski's second year Russian class and saw her Thursday before the shooting.

"She was very sweet. She was sort of shy, but always had a smile on her face," Kent said.