Gunman opens fire on students during class Thursday at Northern Illinois University

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DeKalb, Ill. — The Northern Illinois University president said five people have died in a “rapid fire” shooting at a lecture hall that ended in the gunman’s suicide.

President John Peters says a man dressed in black opened fire with a shotgun and two handguns from the stage of Cole Hall on Thursday. He said 16 other people were wounded.

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.

The shooter, who is the sixth reported dead, was a former student at Northern Illinois. His motive was unknown.

All classes were canceled on the 25,000-student campus about 65 miles west of Chicago.

Lauren Carr said she was sitting in the third row of the lecture hall when she saw the shooter walk through a door on the right-hand side of the stage, pointing a gun straight ahead.

“I try to be a good student and sit close to the front and this is what happens,” said Carr, a 20-year-old sophomore. “I personally army-crawled halfway up the aisle … I said I could get up and run or I could die here.”

She said a student in front of her was bleeding, “but he just kept running.”

“I heard this girl scream, ‘Run, he’s reloading the gun.’”

Ricky Shanas, an MSU kinesiology junior, was on his way back home to Chicago when his mom called and said there were shootings at Northern Illinois.

“I have so many friends that go to Northern, I had to find out if everyone was all right,” he said in a phone interview. “I have two friends in the car that are from the area, too, and they’ve been calling people.”

The incident hits too close to home, Shanas said.

“I hear about these things happening at Virginia Tech (University) and other schools around the nation, but when it hits 45 minutes from home and I have about two dozen friends who go there, it’s weird.”

Brittany Johnson, an MSU premedical junior, who is from Oswego, Ill., said it was hard to get into contact with friends who go there because the phone systems were jammed.

She said many people she attended high school with are now enrolled at Northern Illinois.

“One of my friends was in the building at 2:30, but (the shooter) didn’t show up until around 3. So she was (shaken up) about that,” Johnson said.

Seventeen victims were brought to Kishwaukee Community Hospital in DeKalb, according to spokeswoman Theresa Komitas. One died, two were admitted and three were discharged. Five are being evaluated and six others were transferred to other hospitals in critical condition. At least one man died at OSF St. Anthony Medical Center in Rockford, an official said.

George Gaynor, a senior geography student, who was in Cole Hall when the shooting happened, told the student newspaper, Northern Star, the shooter was “a skinny white guy with a stocking cap on.”

“Some girl got hit in the eye, a guy got hit in the leg,” Gaynor said outside 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 (890-AM) 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 at 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.”

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.

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.

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.

Staff writer Joseph Terry contributed to this report.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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