Print

Mail

wiki links

University gunman was an 'outstanding student'

The gunman who shot dead five people at a university was on Friday identified as an "outstanding" graduate student with no history of trouble but signs of erratic behavior in the last two weeks.

Officials drew a mixed picture of Stephen Kazmierczak, 27, who opened fire in a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University on Thursday, killing five students and wounding 16 others before turning his gun on himself.

"He was an outstanding student," university police chief Donald Grady told a news conference. "He was someone that was revered by the faculty and staff and students alike. We had no indication at all that this would be the type of person to engage in this type of activity."

Officials said Kazmierczak was enrolled at Northern Illinois last year but was a graduate student in social work at another area school, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, at the time of the shooting.

"He was a fairly normal, unstressed person," Grady said.

But he said that Kazmierczak's family reported the gunman had been on some unnamed medication and stopped taking it.

"He had been somewhat erratic in the last two weeks," the police chief said, without elaborating. He said Kazmierczak left no note and there was no clue as to the motive behind the mass shooting.

There was no indication that Kazmierczak knew anyone in the geology class with 162 registered students and Grady dismissed rumors that the Valentine's Day carnage was the result of a jilted love affair.

A bright, award-winning student who had co-authored papers on self-injury and the role of religion in prisons, Kazmierczak did not fit the usual profile of a mass murderer.

"I knew him as a warm, sensitive, very bright student," professor Kristen Myers said in an email. "I never would believe that he could do this. I know that when these horrible things happen, everyone searches for roots to explain it. Here, I'm afraid I don't have any."

Criminology professor Jim Thomas, who mentored Kazmierczak for years, was shocked that such a "gentle, even guy" could have snapped to such an extent.

While Kazmierczak had told the professor that he had been discharged from the military for psychological reasons, "he seemed as normal as you or I," he said.

US President George W. Bush regretted the "tragic" incident.

"Obviously, a tragic situation on that campus and I asked our fellow citizens to offer their blessings," Bush said.

The massacre was the fifth school shooting in a week, following episodes in Ohio, Louisiana, Tennessee and California that left a total of five dead.
This story has been viewed 3273 times.