Northern Illinois University shooting leaves 6 dead, 16 wounded

The gunman was not a current student at the school of more than 25,000 that rises from cornfields and subdivisions 65 miles west of downtown Chicago, authorities said.

NIU President John G. Peters said the man had been enrolled as a sociology graduate student at NIU but left school last spring. Peters said the gunman had no police record.

Late Thursday, sources confirmed that they have tentatively identified the shooter as a 27-year-old graduate student in social work at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

A law-enforcement source said the man was found with a U. of I. identification card in his pocket, but the identification has not been confirmed.

Police also said they were unable to determine a motive for the shooting, which erupted shortly before 3 p.m., about 15 minutes before the class of about 100 students in Cole Hall was scheduled to end.

It was the worst campus shooting since April 16, 2007, when 32 people were shot to death on the campus of Virginia Tech University by a student who later killed himself.

Eyewitnesses described hearing a door to the right rear of the stage slam open and seeing the gunman, wearing a knit cap and sweat shirt, wielding a shotgun. He stayed within 10 feet of the door and started shooting—first with the shotgun and then with the handguns.

"He stood there for a second, looked and then just started shooting," said Meghan Murphy, 22, a junior from Western Springs, a student in the class. "His face was blank, like he wasn't a person. He was a statue, aiming."

Instructor Joseph Peterson, who was giving a PowerPoint presentation, ducked and was shot in the arm.

Junior John Giovanni, 20, of Des Plaines and others said the gunman aimed at the center of the auditorium.

"He just fires right into the audience," Giovanni said. "He didn't say a word. It didn't look like he was aiming directly at someone. I think he was trying to hit as many people as he could."

The blast was deafening, Giovanni said. Chaos erupted, with students dropping to the floor and crawling, running and shoving their way to the doors behind the rear seats, eyewitnesses said. Giovanni said he ran out of one of his shoes.

Half the class bolted for the doors; the rest cowered on the floor and attempted to hide under their seats or under desks, said Loren Weese, 18, a freshman from Schiller Park who was seated on the aisle about halfway up the auditorium.

"A lot of people fell," she said. "I don't know if they did that on purpose to avoid being shot. I remember stepping over them. I didn't talk to anybody."

One of those killed was Dan Parmenter, 20, a sophomore finance major from Elmhurst who worked at the school newspaper, the Northern Star. A graduate of York Community High School, Parmenter played rugby and was hoping to intern at the Chicago Board of Trade this summer. A couple of weeks ago, he persuaded fellow members of the Pi Kappa Alpha to donate time playing bingo.

He was sitting in the first row with his girlfriend when he was shot in the head. She also was shot.

NIU Police Chief Donald Grady said the department received a 911 call from inside the auditorium at 3:06 p.m. Police arrived 29 seconds later and found the gunman dead, Grady said. Students "were running through any door they could find to get out," he said.

After notifying the campus via the university Web site at 3:20 p.m. about a "possible gunman on campus," many students, teachers and staff were told to stay in place or "get to a safe area and take precautions until given the all clear."