University gunman 'had stopped taking medication'
The man who gunned down five people at Northern Illinois University (NIU) in a suicidal rampage became erratic after halting his medication, authorities said today.
Stephen Kazmierczak, a 27-year-old former student at the school, carried a shotgun in a guitar case and was wielding three handguns during yesterday’s ambush attack 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, authorities said.
The two other weapons also were bought legally, but authorities did not know when.
Kazmierczak was a sociology graduate student at NIU up to last spring and was an “outstanding” student while at the university, the school’s president, John Peters, said.
He also said the suspect did not have a criminal record while attending Northern Illinois, a campus with 25,000 students about 65 miles west of Chicago.
Campus Police Chief Donald Grady said authorities were still trying to determine why he would kill. There was no known suicide note, and Kazmierczak had been taking some kind of medication, Mr Grady said.
“He had stopped taking medication and become somewhat erratic in the last couple of weeks,” Mr Grady said. He declined to name the medication.
Investigators recovered 48 shell casings and six shotgun shells following the attack, Mr Grady added.
The gunman paused to reload his shotgun after opening fire on a crowd of terrified students in a geology class. Sixteen people were injured, and he shot himself dead on the stage of the hall.
The shooting was the latest in a spate of attacks in US schools and universities, and was reminiscent of the Virginia Tech massacre last April when a South Korean student killed 32 people before fatally shooting himself. That rampage was the worst mass shooting in modern US history.
More recently, on February 8, a woman shot two fellow students dead before committing suicide at a Louisiana technical college.
In Memphis, Tennessee, a 17-year-old is accused of shooting and critically wounding a fellow student on Monday during a high school gym class, and the 15-year-old victim of a shooting at an Oxnard, California, junior high school has been declared brain dead.
Correcting information his office released earlier today, DeKalb County Coroner Rusty Miller said five students, not six, were killed in the rampage in addition to the gunman.
Mr Miller said the higher victim total was the result of confusion over the fate of a patient taken to another county for treatment.
The gunman’s father, Robert Kazmierczak, briefly came out of his house in Lakeland, Florida, 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.
The gunman was a student at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, Chancellor Richard Herman said.
In the aftermath of the attack, the campus was closed today as students mourned the loss of friends while grappling with a nightmare scenario that unfolded the previous afternoon.
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 3pm (8pm GMT).
Officials said 162 students were registered for the class but it was unknown how many were present at the time of the attack.
Allyse Jerome, 19, a second-year student, said the gunman burst through a stage door and pulled out a gun.
“Honestly, at first everyone thought it was a joke,” Miss 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,” Miss Jerome said. “I thought for sure he was gonna get me.”
President George Bush spoke by telephone to the university’s president and said people would be praying for the NIU community.
The DeKalb County coroner’s office today released the identities of the four victims who died in his county: Daniel Parmenter, 20; Catalina Garcia; Ryanne Mace, 19; and Julianna Gehant, 32.
Another victim, Gayle Dubowski, a 20-year-old second-year student, died at a Rockford hospital, Winnebago County Coroner Sue Fiduccia said.
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 toilet wall in a dormitory.
It was later determined there was no imminent threat and the campus was reopened.
