Posted on 02/14/2008 5:56:20 PM PST by Nachum
DE KALB, Ill (CBS) ― A gunman opened fire on a geology class at Northern Illinois University Thursday afternoon, killing four people before killing himself on-stage in front of panicked students.
Officials said the gunman opened fire in a lecture hall shortly after 3 p.m. and the campus was immediately placed on lockdown.
The shooting happened at a geology lecture class in Cole Hall. Officials said the gunman emerged from behind a screen at the front of the lecture hall and opened fire with a shotgun.
Police said the gunman, armed with a shotgun and two handguns, shot the professor and several students before killing himself onstage in front of the class.
Authorities said they recovered the shotgun and one of the handguns, but had not yet recovered the second handgun.
At a news conference earlier on Thursday afternoon, officials said that 18 people were wounded, including four people who were in critical condition. Two of those victims were being treated at Kishwaukee Hospital, two others were airlifted to regional hospitals.
NIU Police Chief Don Grady later confirmed that the gunman killed four people.
Grady said the gunman was not a student at NIU, but might have been a student elsewhere. He said the gunman acted alone, but that officials have not yet established a motive for the shooting.
One of those wounded was geology teacher Joseph Peterson. His injuries were not considered life-threatening.
A viewer who e-mailed CBS 2 said that her brother was in the lecture hall where the shooting happened. "He says that the gunman was a white male dressed in all black. He kicked the door in and opened fire. My brother dove under the desk, and popped his head up to see the gunman was reloading. He grabbed his girlfriend's hand and ran to the library where they been in lockdown since."
Katie Wagner, a student who was inside the classroom, tells CBS 2 that there were 70 students inside room 101 at Cole Hall when the shooting happened. She said the gunman entered from a side door near the front of the lecture hall and started to fire shots.
She described the gunman as white, tall, skinny and wearing a black tee shirt - and maybe something red.
She said she went to the ground immediately and just started staring at the floor.
The campus will be closed on Friday.
NIU 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 University, scrawled on a bathroom wall in a dormitory. Police determined after an investigation that there was no imminent threat and the campus was reopened.
Officials said Thursday that there was no reason to believe that the shooting was related to the earlier threats.
The following hotlines are available for students & parents:
815-753-1573 815-753-6143 815-753-1574 815-753-1575 815-753-9564 815-753-6257
Counseling is also available on campus for students at all residence halls and at the Neptune Dining Hall, Campus Life Building 100 and the Psychological Services Center in the Psychology/Computer Science Building.
Gunman Killed Four, Then Himself On Stage In Front Of Panicked Students
It’s a good thing that our brilliant fellow Americans disarmed some people with therapy histories since the last university massacre and made our Nation safe.
One has to wonder how much of this is caused by all of the gloom and doom in the “media” and all of the hate being spewed by Marxist “perfessors” on our college “campii.”
I'm sure you likely saw on the news already....(I do not have my t.v. hooked up). They were earlier denying the deaths (likely so that first of kin could be notified). Very sad.
I was in Douglas Hall. Mid 70’s. People got along back then.
I wonder how many people are having second thoughts about going on to a college campus nowadays.
Target rich environments for wackos.
No guns here, move on.
If her brother had a gun and knew how to use it he could have taken this nut out while he reloaded.
Prayers for the heartbroken families. How awful to sacrifice to send your child to college and have them never come home.
Spent 1979-1980 in Douglas.
A lot of drinking and a few bongs, but never gad to worry about a gunman.
You have a point the air waves and media keeps this country in a perpetual state of depression with its everyday doom and gloom!
1969-1971 in Stevenson South. My memories include passing students up and down the rows at the football games, snowball fights at Christmas and the howling wind coming across the cornfields. We were lucky to have had such a civil time to be in college.
Haven’t they ID’s the guy yet? Wonder why they are not telling us more about him. Strange.
Instead of a perpetual State of War the MSM keeps us enslaved in a perpetual State of Elections.
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