Six dead, including gunman, in US university
shooting
Posted: 15 February 2008 1007 hrs
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Ambulances line up at Northern Illinois University after a
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Five dead in shooting at US campus,
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Gunman opens fire at Chicago
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Six dead, including gunman, in US university
shooting
CHICAGO - A 27 year old graduate turned a university
lecture into a Valentine's Day massacre Thursday, killing six
people before turning the gun on himself in the latest episode of
US school violence, authorities said.
Armed with a shotgun and two handguns, he calmly stepped out from
behind the curtain at the front of a packed auditorium just minutes
before a geography class ended at Northern Illinois University,
officials and witnesses said.
"It started and ended within a matter of seconds," university
police chief Donald Grady said at a press conference outside this
Midwestern US city.
"We have no apparent motive at this time," Grady said. "The suspect
killed himself on the stage."
Grady would not identify the six victims or confirm reports that a
teacher was among the 18 people shot.
Witnesses said the shooter, described as a white male around six
feet (1.8 meters) tall, said nothing as he opened fire.
"He was aiming towards the crowd but I don't think he was aiming at
a specific person," a witness named Sheila told WBBM radio.
"He was quiet. He just stood on the stage in front of everybody and
just started shooting."
"I saw him holding the gun and it was huge. I thought it was fake
and then I realized he was really shooting at people and I got
down," she said.
"I saw a lot of blood. I have blood all over my clothes."
Officials of the 112-year-old university 65 miles (105 kilometers)
west of Chicago gave out few details of the incident.
"It has been confirmed that there has been a shooting on campus and
several people have been taken away by ambulance," its website
said.
A spokesman for nearby Kishwaukee Community Hospital earlier said
17 wounded victims had been brought in. Students described
now-familiar scenes of panic in the fifth school shooting in the
United States in the last week.
"I saw a lot of confusion," Dominique Broxton, 22, told the Chicago
Tribune, describing the scene from her dorm room. "Students were
running. People really didn't know what was going on."
The shooting came 10 months after 32 students and faculty were shot
down by a mentally disturbed student at Virginia Tech University in
the deadliest massacre ever at a US school.
Chicago has long been noted for the Valentine's Day Massacre of
February 14, 1929, when seven people were executed by machine-gun,
in a Mafia killing during the city's gangster heyday.
Northern Illinois University, chartered in 1895, is a teaching and
research institution with a student enrolment of more than 25,000
and nearly 1,300 teachers.
It has 862 international students from 88 nations. Broxton said she
could see two wounded students from her dorm room.
"The ambulance took away two students on the ground right outside
my dorm," she said. "I don't know them. They looked bloody. Where I
am right now, there are a lot of police, at least a dozen.
There are police cars and trucks everywhere." "There is an intercom
system inside the dorm.
Someone came on and stated that someone had been caught. They said
they caught the shooter and that we should remain calm and stay in
our rooms." -AFP/vm
