18 Shot at Northern Illinois University

[JimH52]

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/02/14/university.shooting/index.html

3 critically wounded

 

[Annie]

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/02/14/university.shooting/index.html

3 critically wounded

I've heard 4 critical. My daughter goes to school there, as does my son's girlfriend. I was in a meeting after school and didn't hear until coming home. I grabbed the cell phone and called my daughter. Luckily she has pneumonia and wasn't on campus. She got a text on her cell phone and an email as the emergency responders were coming. That they seemed to have learned from VT shooting.

 

[JimH52]

I am reading on CNN that 4 died. This is so sad. What the h*ll is wrong with people!

 

[Gunny]

By CARYN ROUSSEAU, Associated Press Writer
9 minutes ago

DEKALB, Ill. - A man dressed in black opened fire with a shotgun and two handguns from the 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.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080215/ap_on_re_us/niu_shooting

//

 

[Zoomie1980]

I am reading on CNN that 4 died. This is so sad. What the h*ll is wrong with people!

Nothing is wrong with people. Something was wrong with guy with the gun, but nothing is wrong with people

 

[Waterrescuedude]

Let people with concealed weapons permits carry on campus. It is common in universities to say that the only ones that are armed there is campus police.. Which is stupid I know our university here only has like 30 officers. I am a military veteran that knows how to handle a weapon responsibly and am a very good aim. It is just retarded to leave people defenseless on campus.

 

[Nevadamedic]

Let people with concealed weapons permits carry on campus. It is common in universities to say that the only ones that are armed there is campus police.. Which is stupid I know our university here only has like 30 officers. I am a military veteran that knows how to handle a weapon responsibly and am a very good aim. It is just retarded to leave people defenseless on campus.

Thats the last thing we need.

 

[midcan5]

Ok someone tell me why this seems to happen every week in America? Why? Not the stupidity that says we should all be armed to prevent it, but the 'why it happens in the first place?' Thoughts?

 

[Shogun]

While I disagree that students on campus should be packing heat I could probably come around to allowing faculty to carry...

then again, when the first nutter professor shoots up his class then the blame game will continue just as it would if gun packing students produced a nutter or two.

life is going to happen. Even the crazy stuff. dont blame the gun, don't blame the campus for not allowing students to carry; blame the individual nutter that made the choice to vent by killing people. It doesn't leave much room to rage on someone but it's the truth.


the shogun hath spoken.

 

[LordBrownTrout]

Ok someone tell me why this seems to happen every week in America? Why? Not the stupidity that says we should all be armed to prevent it, but the 'why it happens in the first place?' Thoughts?

No discipline, or very little, at home. More disrespect for human life. This stuff rarely EVER happened when I was growing up. I lived around guns my whole life and had complete respect for their power and what they could do. This came from instruction from my parents.

 

[JimH52]

Let people with concealed weapons permits carry on campus. It is common in universities to say that the only ones that are armed there is campus police.. Which is stupid I know our university here only has like 30 officers. I am a military veteran that knows how to handle a weapon responsibly and am a very good aim. It is just retarded to leave people defenseless on campus.

Interesting but we don't need the Wild West at Schools of Higher Education. The guy had his shotgun in a guitar case, for gosh sakes. How do you stop that? The debate could go on and on. Unfortunately, the VT incident has started a trend that is getting scarier and scarier.

Let's look at what could have happened if any of the students in the lecture hall were packing. This guy is on stage shooting and one of them pulls out his pistol and starts shooting. How do you know that in the confusion still another person pulls out heat and begins poping the guy with the pistol in the audience. Chaos reigns.

I read about seemingly silly suspensions of grade schoolers because they brought a toy guns to school and then I hear about things like this and I pause...

My prayers go out for all the students here and their families. And particularly my prayers go out for this country and a terribly disturbing trend. God Bless America.

 

[midcan5]

No discipline, or very little, at home. More disrespect for human life. This stuff rarely EVER happened when I was growing up. I lived around guns my whole life and had complete respect for their power and what they could do. This came from instruction from my parents.

I don't buy that fully but it is a consideration as my wife often tells me how much kids have changed in her 25 years of teaching. But is still seems more prevalent in the US and other societies are just as open as we are, maybe more.


"The Americans value their constitution and the U.S. Constitution's Second Amendment deals with the right to bear arms. Here is the price that ordinary Americans are paying for the privilege

- 8 children a day die in murders, suicides and accidents involving guns

- since John F. Kennedy was assinated more Americans have died from gunshot wounds at home than died in all the wars of the 20th century

- Osama bin Laden would need at least nine twin towers like attacks each year to equal what Americans do to themselves every year with guns.

- Murder rates in LA, NY and Chigago were approaching the hightest in the world (30 per 100,000) until moves were made in late 20th century to restrict access to guns to teenagers. (The NRA wants these moves reversed)

If Osama bin Laden had had more sense, instead of launching a terrorist attack, he would simply have provided financial backing to the NRA."

http://thegreenman.net.au/mt/archives/000473.html

 

[LordBrownTrout]

I don't buy that fully but it is a consideration as my wife often tells me how much kids have changed in her 25 years of teaching. But is still seems more prevalent in the US and other societies are just as open as we are, maybe more.


"The Americans value their constitution and the U.S. Constitution's Second Amendment deals with the right to bear arms. Here is the price that ordinary Americans are paying for the privilege

- 8 children a day die in murders, suicides and accidents involving guns

- since John F. Kennedy was assinated more Americans have died from gunshot wounds at home than died in all the wars of the 20th century

- Osama bin Laden would need at least nine twin towers like attacks each year to equal what Americans do to themselves every year with guns.

- Murder rates in LA, NY and Chigago were approaching the hightest in the world (30 per 100,000) until moves were made in late 20th century to restrict access to guns to teenagers. (The NRA wants these moves reversed)

If Osama bin Laden had had more sense, instead of launching a terrorist attack, he would simply have provided financial backing to the NRA."

http://thegreenman.net.au/mt/archives/000473.html

Ok, let's go off your assertion that you don't fully buy my reasoning, how, exactly, have kids changed and why?

 

[midcan5]

Kids have changed. First some comments on how and where, then the why which is harder. They lack a sense of civic duty, it is all about them, the world rotates around them and their every word is worth saying. Impolite with little respect for authority or even for each other. Lazy, everything needs to be handed to them, they lack discipline. The lazy part is troubling as there is no effort to think about tough topics. Now the why. Mostly parents who cater to them and think their every utterance is profound, or maybe the parents don't listen either and only provide them with example. Where does the self centeredness come from? A me first attitude, only I count, but where does that come from. But even though these kids can be obnoxious it is far step to shooting people. My wife tells me of some who threaten, but her school has zero tolerance so any thing said out of line is meet with quickly. Your turn why do they kill?

 

[jillian]

Let people with concealed weapons permits carry on campus. It is common in universities to say that the only ones that are armed there is campus police.. Which is stupid I know our university here only has like 30 officers. I am a military veteran that knows how to handle a weapon responsibly and am a very good aim. It is just retarded to leave people defenseless on campus.

Yah, let's make campuses the wild west.

Absurd.

 

[jillian]

No discipline, or very little, at home. More disrespect for human life. This stuff rarely EVER happened when I was growing up. I lived around guns my whole life and had complete respect for their power and what they could do. This came from instruction from my parents.

The guy was off his meds. He was sick. He never should have had a gun if he was on meds.

Has nothing to do with the parents.

From AOL (apologies for not being able to link it)

Cops Say Gunman Went Off Medication
Campus Shooter Identified as 27-Year-Old Stephen Kazmierczak
By CARYN ROUSSEAU and DEANNA BELLANDI,AP
Posted: 2008-02-15 15:59:19
Filed Under: Nation News
DEKALB, Ill. (Feb. 15) - The man who gunned down five people at Northern Illinois University in a suicidal rampage became erratic after halting his medication and carried a shotgun to campus inside a guitar case, police said Friday.

*skip*

Two of the weapons — the pump-action Remington shotgun and a Glock 9mm handgun — were purchased legally less than a week ago, on Feb. 9, authorities said. They were purchased in Champaign, where Kazmierczak was enrolled at the University of Illinois.

A spokesman for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said the other two guns were also legally purchased and traced to the Champaign gun shop, but the ATF was still determining when Kazmierczak picked them up.

Kazmierczak had a valid Firearm Owner's Identification Card, which is required for all Illinois residents who buy or possess firearms, authorities said.

 

[LordBrownTrout]

Kids have changed. First some comments on how and where, then the why which is harder. They lack a sense of civic duty, it is all about them, the world rotates around them and their every word is worth saying. Impolite with little respect for authority or even for each other. Lazy, everything needs to be handed to them, they lack discipline. The lazy part is troubling as there is no effort to think about tough topics. Now the why. Mostly parents who cater to them and think their every utterance is profound, or maybe the parents don't listen either and only provide them with example. Where does the self centeredness come from? A me first attitude, only I count, but where does that come from. But even though these kids can be obnoxious it is far step to shooting people. My wife tells me of some who threaten, but her school has zero tolerance so any thing said out of line is meet with quickly. Your turn why do they kill?

I happen to agree with everything that you said. Within your analysis lies the disrespect for humanity and complete disdain for actions have consequences.

 

[jillian]

I've heard 4 critical. My daughter goes to school there, as does my son's girlfriend. I was in a meeting after school and didn't hear until coming home. I grabbed the cell phone and called my daughter. Luckily she has pneumonia and wasn't on campus. She got a text on her cell phone and an email as the emergency responders were coming. That they seemed to have learned from VT shooting.

Glad your daughter and son's girlfriend are ok. Scary stuff.

 

[LordBrownTrout]

The guy was off his meds. He was sick. He never should have had a gun if he was on meds.

Has nothing to do with the parents.

From AOL (apologies for not being able to link it)

OK, you're right. How are more kids on meds these days than in the late 70's and early 80's when I was growing up? Still, the gun is not at fault, it's the person. No need for apologies, I trust you. Whose fault is it that he was off his meds?

 

[jillian]

OK, you're right. How are more kids on meds these days than in the late 70's and early 80's when I was growing up? Still, the gun is not at fault, it's the person. No need for apologies, I trust you.

I didn't say the gun was at fault. I said he shouldn't have had one. He was mentally ill and his behavior was erratic when he was off his meds. We're not talking ADD (vastly overdiagnosed, I believe)...