Northern Illinois University: 5 Students Shot Dead in Lecture Hall
Gunman Slays 5 at N. Illinois UniversityI don't know that any of them will ever see this, but my heart goes out to the people of Northern Illinois University this morning. To the families of those who died, to the students who witnessed this atrocity, and to everyone who has been affected by this.
DeKALB, Ill. — With minutes left in a class in ocean sciences at Northern Illinois University on Thursday afternoon, a tall skinny man dressed all in black stepped out from behind a curtain on the stage of the lecture hall, said nothing, and opened fire with a shotgun, the authorities and witnesses said.
The man shot again and again, witnesses said, perhaps 20 times or more. Students in the large lecture hall, stunned and screaming, dropped to the floor. They crouched behind anything they could find, even an overhead projector. They scattered, the blood of victims spattering, some said, on those who escaped injury.Five people, all of them students, were killed, John G. Peters, the president of Northern Illinois University, said at a news conference late Thursday evening. Sixteen others were wounded, two of them critically, Mr. Peters said. Hospital officials said several of the students had been shot in the head.
The gunman, whom the authorities did not identify, also died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, Mr. Peters said. The gunman, he said, had been a graduate student in sociology at the university in 2007, but was no longer enrolled here. Records suggested that the man, who had more recently attended a different state school, had no previous police contact, the authorities said...
What is wrong with us? Why is our culture still somehow spawning monsters? I'm at a loss; this is too horrible.
