Gunman Planned Campus Shooting for at Least a Week

Feb. 15, 2008 — -- The gunman who fatally shot five students before killing himself in a Northern Illinois University lecture hall, likely planned his murder spree at least a week in advance, investigators said today.

The graduate student bought two of his four guns at a Champaign, Ill., gun store Saturday — indicating that he had been planning his assault for at least six days, ABC News' Richard Esposito and Pierre Thomas report. The other weapons were purchased from the same store in December and August 2007.

The gunman, Steven Kazmierczak, 27, a one-time undergraduate and award-winning sociology graduate student at NIU, was "revered by faculty and staff," and gave "no indication that this was the type of person who would engage in this activity," said campus Police Chief Donald Grady.

Kazmierczak had recently stopped taking medication and "had become somewhat erratic," Grady told reporters.

The fifth student died this morning from gunshot wounds suffered when Kazmierczak opened fire Thursday afternoon at NIU in DeKalb, Ill.

The shooter fired 54 rounds from the weapons, killing six, including himself, and wounding 16.

Kazmierczak, dressed in black, was armed with three handguns and a shotgun, as students took cover beneath desks and ran out of the lecture hall. He was later found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, police said.

Carrying the shotgun concealed in a guitar case, and the handguns under his coat, he entered the hall through a door near the front of the room's stage.

No note has been found and no motive is yet known, Grady said.

"We have no motive, and I have no way of knowing what the motive was," he said.

In all, there were 23 casualties in the shooting, including the gunman. Several of the victims were taken to hospitals, where three died. The others, including the shooter, died at the scene of the gunfire.

Police said he reloaded the shotgun in a shooting that lasted less than five minutes, before he took his own life. Police arrived on the scene within two minutes of the first reports, but it was too late to stop the gunman.

"There is no note or threat that I know of," NIU president John Peters told ABC News. "By all accounts that we can tell right now, [he] was a very good student that the professors thought well of."

Law enforcement authorities told ABC News' Jack Date that Kazmierczak bought two weapons Saturday — a Remington 12-gauge shotgun and 9 mm Glock pistol — at a gun store in Champaign, Ill.

From the same firearms dealer, he obtained a Hi Point 380 pistol on Dec. 30, 2007, and an SIG Sauer 9 mm pistol, on Aug. 6, 2007.

Kazmierczak had no police record, allowing him to qualify to buy the guns under the state's gun laws, sources said.

An Internet gun dealer based in Green Bay, Wis., who sold a weapon to Virginia Tech gunman Seung-Hui Cho last year, sold two empty 9 mm Glock magazines and a Glock holster to Kazmierczak, the company said in a statement.

Kazmierczak received the accessories from topglock.com, owned by TGSCOM Inc., on Tuesday, two days before the shooting. It remains unknown if the accessories were used in the shooting.

Good Student

By all accounts, Kazmierczak was a good student, serving as a member of the NIU Academic Criminal Justice Association, and a teaching aid as an undergraduate. In 2006, he received a Dean's Award from the sociology department.

Kazmierczak's father, Robert, lives in Lakeland, Fla., and his mother died in September 2006.

The shooting occurred during an introductory geology class at the university's Cole Hall, in the campus center, around 3:15 p.m. About 163 students were registered for the class.

"The assailant began firing into the assembled class from the stage — from the front," Peters said.

"It didn't seem like he was aiming. He just raised a gun and shot immediately," said Paul Sundstrom, a student who was sitting in the class with his brother Kevin when the gunman opened fire.

Kevin Sundstrom said, "He had [a] blank stare on his face, not a frown, not a grin, like there was nobody there. I went back to find Paul. He was reloading his gun, like he's in the backyard, methodically going about it."

"I didn't think it was real, I went to [the] ground, asked a girl if it was for real. She said 'run!' I crawled and never looked back," said Kristina Balluff, another student, who was also in the hall.

"If he had [a] different gun, it would have been worse," said Kevin.

Peters described the incident as a "very brief rapid-fire assault that ended with the gunman taking his own life."

An eyewitness told ABC News' Eileen Murphy that the shooter was a white male, about 5 feet, 9 inches, wearing a black beanie and a black coat, who had an ebony shotgun. He came in through the teacher's podium area and opened fire on 100 to 120 people who were attending the class.

Grady said it appeared the gunman had acted alone.

Most of the victims were taken to Kishwaukee Community Hospital in DeKalb, though some were airlifted elsewhere, including a female with a chest injury, and two other victims with head injuries.

All of the casualties were students, including the teaching assistant, leading the class, who was a graduate student, Peters said.

Today, DeKalb County coroner Dennis J. Miller released the identities of the four victims who died in his county: Daniel Parmenter, 20, of Westchester; Catalina Garcia, 20, of Cicero; Ryanne Mace, 19, of Carpentersville; and Julianna Gehant, 32, of Meridan.

He said the gunman had "no record of police contact or prior arrest."

George Gaynor, a senior geography student, who was in Cole Hall when the shooting occurred, told the student newspaper that the shooter was "a skinny white guy with a stocking cap on," according to The Associated Press.

"Some girl got hit in the eye, a guy got hit in the leg," Gaynor told the AP just minutes after the shooting. "It was like five minutes before class ended, too."

Senior Desiree Smith left the lecture hall and ran to safety when the shooting began.

"We realized everyone was crawling out, so I started to Army crawl out of there," she said.

Student Edward Robinson told WLS-TV in Chicago 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."

Student Zach Seward saw teaching assistant Joe Peterson duck, "but that was all I saw," he said.

"As I was running, I just kept waiting for something to hit me in the back. I didn't know where to run, tried to decide where it's safe to be, and there isn't anywhere safe."

At 3:20 p.m., the university posted an alert on its Web site, warning students of a possible shooter.

"Get to a safe area, and take precautions until given the all clear. Avoid the King Commons and all buildings in that vicinity," the Web site posting read.

Thirty minutes later, the site confirmed the shooting and said, "several people" had been taken away by ambulance.

In December, the campus was closed for a day after a threat referred to April's Virginia Tech massacre, in which more than 30 people were killed, according to the Northern Star.

Police established a perimeter around Cole Hall and 15 to 20 emergency vehicles were on the scene in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, according to the Daily Chronicle newspaper.

More than 25,000 students are enrolled at the school, which is located 65 miles west of Chicago.