Fourth School Shooting This Week !!

( disclaimer- this is not mine and someone else wrote it. )

By CARYN ROUSSEAU, Associated Press Writer
3 minutes ago



DEKALB, Ill. - A former student 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 five students and injuring 16 others before committing suicide, authorities said.

The gunman fatally shot four women and a man in a "brief, rapid-fire assault" that sent terrified students running for cover, university President John Peters said. Four died at the scene, including the gunman, and the other two died at a hospital, he said. Two victims were in critical condition.

Investigators did not know what led the gunman, a former NIU graduate student in sociology, to spray bullets at the geology class instructor and dozens of students in the large hall around 3 p.m.

"I kept thinking, 'Oh God, he's going to shoot me. Oh God, I'm dead. I'm dead. I'm dead,'" said Desiree Smith, a senior journalism major who dropped to the floor near the back of the auditorium.

"People were crawling on each other, trampling each other," she said. "As I got near the door, I got up and I started running."

Officials said 162 students were registered for the class but it was unknown how many were there Thursday.

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

"I personally Army-crawled halfway up the aisle," said Carr, a 20-year-old sophomore. "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.'"

Student Jerry Santoni was in a back row when he saw the gunman enter a service door to the stage.

"I saw him shoot one round at the teacher," he said. "After that, I proceeded to get down as fast as I could."

Santoni dived down, hitting his head the seat in front of him, leaving a knot about half the size of a pingpong ball on his forehead.

The teacher, a graduate student, was wounded but was expected to recover, the school president said. He did not give details of the injuries.

Peters said the gunman was not currently enrolled at the 25,000-student campus about 65 miles west of Chicago.

"It appears he may have been a student somewhere else," University Police Chief Donald Grady said.

Seventeen victims were brought to nearby Kishwaukee Community Hospital, where one died, according to spokeswoman Theresa Komitas. School officials said four people, including the gunman, died at the lecture hall and two later died at hospitals.

Michael Gentile was meeting with two of his students directly beneath the lecture hall when the shootings happened. He could hear the chaos a few feet above his head.

"The shotgun blast must have been so loud," said Gentile, a 27-year-old media studies instructor. "It sounded like something was dropping down the stairs... We had no idea what this was."

Then, shorter, sharper noises he recognized as handgun shots.

"There was a pretty quick succession ... just pow, pow, pow," said Gentile, who didn't leave his office for about 90 minutes. He used a surveillance camera just outside his office to confirm that the people knocking on his door were police.

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."

The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms sent 15 agents to the scene, according to spokesman Thomas Ahern. He said information about the weapons involved would be sent to the ATF's national database in Washington and given urgent priority. The FBI also was assisting.

All classes were canceled Thursday night and the 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.

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 and the campus was reopened. Peters said he knew of no connection between that incident and Thursday's attack. Peters said he knew of no connection between that incident and Thursday's attack.

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.

 

Wait...4th this WEEK?! WTH...that's just scary...

Anyways, this is pretty frightening seeing how all this happened after the Virginia Tech incident...Though it kinda makes u wonder y it's always universities...

 

Well theres alot more stress for UC students. so that might be it but this latest one the guy wasn't even one of the students currenty attending the school . So they don't know y or hav an idea y he could've done it . The other two were at a high school and junior high .

 

They were saying this morning that the shooter was part of a campus criminal justice group...and a student at Illinois University in Chamaign, but had attended Northern Illinois.

It makes me wonder what goes on inside someones head to go from begin completely sane, well liked individual to able to walk into a random classroom and shoot 21 people as if nothing about this was out of the ordinary...

Last year we had a shooting here in SLC where a teen walked into a shopping mall downtown and just started shooting. It's something that no one should ever have to encounter because schools are supposed to be a safe haven, like our homes.

My prayers are with the families of those impacted by this tragedy.

 

see everybody?
this is what happens to people with social problems and cant take it :/
but srsly, wth are these maniacs trying to prove?

 

I don't see the point of killing people if you just want to die. You're not going to go down as a hero, and you're not going to be remembered for the right reasons. If someone wants to die so bad, why do they have to have the rest of their world go with them. I find that a lot of people kill though because they were treated badly by their peers, but that's still not a reason to go fire a gun at them.

 

Well, in my area (the area around Memphis, Tennessee) we had one at a high school...and then sadly...they killed themselves as well :/

This just comes to show that if you give people a chance and try to help nothing like this won't happen often!​

 

There are so mamy shootings going on. It's really becoming a world full of insane people. Those people are sick in the mind and want to kill as much as they can be remembered. If killing people is what it takes, then they'll do it. I don't see why they would think they would be remembered as a hero or whatever they were thinking in those twisted little minds of theirs.

 

It's extremely frightening that even places of learning aren't safe anymore. I know when the shooting at Virginia Tech happened my university (Northern Arizona University) immediately buckled down on safety and implemented a text-based warning system, re-evaluated its security plan, and made an erstwhile attempt to assure the students that we were safe and protected. It's really mind-blowing to see just the shootings we've had in the past year. It seems to me like they're increasing and that is just... scary.

It's a dangerous world and man. I don't see how killing innocent people not even related to whatever problems you're facing solves anything. Thoughts to those affected by this event.

 

This is tragic as are all shootings really. My heart goes out to those victims and those traumatized by this. We do have a problem though seeing potential people that are going to do these kinds of things before they happen. The people who spree kill and tend to end up dead are just going for a way to go out in a blaze of glory because they are often overlooked, socially inept, and downcast or ostracized by society. We really need to start finding these people and getting them mental help before they decide their lives aren't worth it and finally they will get some attention and headline time even though it means they are dead. It's something to think about when you go teasing someone for smelling bad, not being as good at something as you are, or they wear odd clothes, isn't it? This is not to say I advocate in any way what these people do when they spree kill, but it just comes to my attention that they are always people that are ignored or shunned in some way and frustrated with it and life itself. Though they have snapped, you can almost always find a reason why, even if it is pathetic. We all are not built the same to handle the same problems of life equally. If we were, these problems would not happen. They are weak-willed and angry, as well as anxious and they feel pushed to the edge to make this choice.

 

This sounds horrible, but this is when I think people take the expression, "If your going down, take your enemies down with you." too seriously. Although it is something that can mis-lead you.

 

I feel bad that socially, people must try and prove something to someone else, then someone loses control and ends up hurting someone

It's pathetic, and very dishonoring towards the schools, the kids, and the staff.

I hope this teaches a lesson for all those kids at the school.

and may god have mercy on their souls

 

That's what happens when kids are spoiled, or ignored to much. Mostly when their ignored. Even though I'm also ignored I can still handle myself. Their little future Hitlers.​