treelizard

7 dead in N. Illinois U. hall shooting By CARYN ROUSSEAU and DEANNA BELLANDI, Associated Press Writers
30 minutes ago



DEKALB, Ill. - Another person shot when a gunman opened fire at a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University has died, bringing the toll to seven, including the gunman, a coroner said Friday.

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Investigators and school officials did not immediately know why the man indiscriminately fired into the crowd with a shotgun and two handguns Thursday, wounding 15 people and sending panicked students fleeing for the exits before killing himself.

"We have no motive and I have no way of knowing what the motive was," University Police Chief Donald Grady said.

DeKalb County Coroner Dennis J. Miller on Friday 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.

Two other victims died after being transfered to hospitals in other counties, Miller said in a news release.

Winnebago County Coroner Sue Fiduccia on Friday said a female victim died in her county but has not been identified pending notification of family. An autopsy was planned for Friday, she said.

Witnesses said the gunman, dressed in black and wearing a stocking cap, emerged from behind a screen on the stage of 200-seat Cole Hall and opened fire just as the class was about to end around 3 p.m.

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

Allyse Jerome, 19, a sophomore from Schaumburg, said the gunman burst through a stage door and pulled out a gun.

"Honestly, at first everyone thought it was a joke," Jerome said. Everyone hit the floor, she said. Then she got up and ran, but tripped. She said she felt like "an open target."

"He could've decided to get me," Jerome said Friday. "I thought for sure he was gonna get me."

The shooter had been a graduate student in sociology at Northern Illinois as recently as spring 2007, but was not currently enrolled at the 25,000-student campus, University President John Peters said.

Authorities did not release the gunman's name, but Peters said he had no record of police contact or an arrest record while attending Northern Illinois, about 65 miles west of Chicago.

The Chicago Tribune, citing two unidentified law enforcement sources, reported Friday that the gunman was a graduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

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!'"

More than a hundred students cried and hugged as they gathered outside the Phi Kappa Alpha house early Friday morning to remember Dan Parmenter, the 20-year-old sophomore from Elmhurst, who was one of those killed.

"I'm not angry," his stepfather, Robert Greer, told the Chicago Tribune. "I'm just sad, and I know that right now what I need to do is comfort my wife."

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.

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Associated Press writers Carla K. Johnson, Michael Tarm, David Mercer, Martha Irvine, Nguyen Huy Vu, Sarah Rafi, Mike Robinson and photographer Charles Rex Arbogast contributed to this report.

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FitnessRubber

i didn't hear about it until this morning, but... damn...

Mike Brewer

I'm telling you, if we arm everybody, this shit will stop. Or at least the next few headlines will read far differently. I'm not trying to disrespect those involved, but can you imagine how much of a relief it would be to hear that a bunch of armed students and teachers stopped a gunman before he could injure anyone?

treelizard

Evil does not stop until it is stopped.

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Mike Brewer

Agreed, 1000%

Such incidents call attention to what might have been meant by the "security of a free state" when our founders wrote that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

Give everyone - EVERYONE - the right to defend themselves with the same kind of force that a criminal might attack them, and I promise, you'll see lower crime rates and more dead criminals.

DickHardman

bad times.

unfortunately these incidents just make people fear guns even more, instead of making them realize that guns could have reduced this kids body count.

Mike Brewer

Dick,
Are you going to post that same picture every time a thread about guns or a shooting comes up? Just curious, because that dude's crazy eyes haunt my dreams...

DickHardman

yeah, pretty much. i like to post it on threads that are about kids shooting up their schools or committing other violent acts, or threads were garland is getting out some of his teen angst.

Garland

............Meow?

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DickHardman

02/17/08 Longview TX
An armed robber walks into an East Texas convenience store and fires at a clerk point blank, but the clerk fights back with gunfire of her own.
Around 10:30 Saturday night, a man walked into the E-Z Food Mart on North 4th Street with a gun and fired.

Like she does everyday Longview clerk Robin Adams helped a customer Saturday night, but then a man runs in with a gun and points it at her head. For Adams, 37 it was the most frightening moment of her life.

"As soon as I raised up, all I saw was the barrel of his gun," said Adams. "He didn't ask for money. He didn't speak, he just wanted to shoot me, and I don't know why." With only a second to react, Adams said she ducked to the right as the shot is fired. Miraculously, the bullet misses, tears through a cigarette pack and out a plate glass window.

"All I was thinking at this point is like, I'm going to be shot in a split second, and I ducked to the right an he did shoot," said Adams. Adams' spilt second decision to lean to the right is what saved her life. The bullet that exited through this glass window was aimed at her head. In another second Adams makes a gutsy move and grabs a 32 pistol under the counter and fights back.

"He immediately ducked and ran out the door," said Adams. "I just followed him with the gun and shot." The suspect runs for the door and Adams fire, but a metal bar blocks the bullet.

"I looked at that glass window, and all I could think of was that could have been my skull and my children would have had their mother in a closed casket.

The suspect is described as a black male, about 5-feet 4-inches tall, weighing around 140 to 150 pounds. He was wearing a dark colored hooded sweatshirt, a baseball cap with a red bandana over his face and blues jeans.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=657_1203364692

Mike Brewer

My own sister recently had a situation where she was saved by a legally armed neighbor. She walked in on to burglars looting her home. They had jimmied the front door, and when she walked in with her little 5 year-old girl, she was effectively between the criminals and their exit. They were stupid enough to park their car in her driveway, because they wanted her new big-screen TV. Going out the back door would mean leaving their car there for the cops to pick through.

My sister was standing panicked when her next door neighbor came over. He and his wife commonly visit, and my sister sits for his kids. He drew his pistol and chased the two burglars away out the back and down the side alley of the housing development. The burglars had no choice but to fumble their way through the back door and leave their car behind. Cops arrived and found the criminals' information and a cell phone in the car and caught not only the bad guys, but an accomplice who had been watching my sister coming and going for a week or two, saw the delivery truck that dropped off the new TV, and had called the cell phone the crooks left behind just minutes after my sister left the house.

Without that gun owner and his weapon present, I might be telling a very different story about what happens when a woman walks in and cuts off two burglars from their escape route.

Liberty

Arm students - you're kidding, right? I can just see it, kids having shoot outs and showdowns at "High Noon." Ambushing each other, etc. Have you not learned anything from the Wild West's gun play days? Wherein criminals still committed their crimes though everyone was armed.

Also, do you really think that kids who commit these murders, as prepared and psyched up as they sometimes are, would not have prepared for "armed students," and teachers, had such been the norm?

There is no easy answer to this. Criminals being the conniving beings they are, adjust as well as we do.

warrior_artist

They're proposing some legislation in Arizona right now allowing CCW holders to carry concealed on campus. I hope it passes.

Everytime I hear about something like this I just think, wish I was there. And I know I'm not alone when I think that.

DickHardman

maybe thats cause you watched too many 80's and early 90's action movies like rambo, die hard, under siege etc.....

Mike Brewer

I disagree. I think it's because he's a man who works in service to his community trying to prevent exactly this kind of thing. I think the instinct for a protector to want to be at the scene of a tragedy and keep it from becoming tragic is as understandable as a running back or wide receiver wanting the ball on the last play of the big game. That's the job, and wanting to be able to do it well when it's most needed is an admirable trait.

Warrior, you're not the only one. I don't like the idea of shooting someone, and I certainly don't like the idea of them shooting at me. But I know I have the will and ability to do it, and I often wonder how differently some of these situations might come out if someone on the scene shared that quality. I know that I'd rather something like that happened with me in the room rather than any of my family or friends by themselves.