Ironically, Northern Illinois Shooter's Interests were Peace & Social Justice...huh?

DEKALB, Illinois (CNN) -- Northern Illinois University on Friday identified the man who fatally shot five people in a classroom as Steven P. Kazmierczak, whom police described as an award-winning student "revered" by colleagues and faculty.

(shooter, Steven P. Kazmierczak)
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Students and faculty described Steven P. Kazmierczak as "a fairly normal, unstressed person," police say.


Kazmierczak, 27, who police said shot 21 people before shooting and killing himself, was an award-winning sociology student and a leader of a campus criminal justice group, according to school Web sites.

Concealing a shotgun in a guitar case, and tucking three other guns under his coat, Kazmierczak walked into a geology class in an NIU lecture hall Thursday afternoon and began firing, police said. The graduate student stopped to reload his shotgun before he took his own life, police said.

Kazmierczak was a student about 175 miles away at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, police said, and there "were no red flags" warning of any violent behavior.

One of Kazmierczak's advisers said that she enjoyed having him as a student and that he was "a nice person; he was a nice kid."

"I found Steven to be a very committed student, extremely respectful of me as an instructor and adviser," said Jan Carter-Black, an assistant professor in the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's School of Social Work. Video Watch student reaction to shooting aftermath »

Carter-Black was assigned to be Kazmierczak's faculty adviser when he enrolled in the school in the summer of 2007, and he was a student in her human behavior and social environment class last fall, she said.


Carter-Black and Chris Larrison -- another School of Social Work associate professor who knew Kazmierczak -- described the gunman as pleasant, considerate and flexible.

"I was so surprised to see this today," Larrison said. Kazmierczak worked on a research project concerning mental health clinics under him, he said.

"It doesn't fit with the Steven" he knew, Larrison said.

The 27-year-old participated fully in the class -- which met for three hours once a week -- until he formally withdrew from it sometime before late September and became a part-time student, Carter-Black said.

He was lightening his course load so he could take on a position in the prison system, she said.

She didn't know if the position was in the federal or state system, but said he had discussed the decision with several faculty members. He later left the position at the prison, she said, but she didn't know under what circumstances.

"He was very committed to pursuing a career with prisoners," Larrison said. He said it was likely that the career interest corresponded with Kazmierczak's concentration in mental health.

Carter-Black and Larrison said Kazmierczak resumed full-time status this semester.

In 2006, Kazmierczak was a student at Northern Illinois, police said, where he worked on a graduate paper that described his interest in "corrections, political violence, and peace and social justice."

The paper said Kazmierczak was "co-authoring a manuscript on the role of religion in the formation of early prisons in the United States."

University police Chief Donald Grady said Kazmierczak "was an awarded student. He was someone that was revered by the faculty and staff and students alike."

Fellow students and faculty described Kazmierczak as "a fairly normal, unstressed person," Grady said.

People close to Kazmierczak said he was taking medication but had recently stopped, "and he had become somewhat erratic in the last couple of weeks," Grady said.

Police have found no notes that would explain the attack, and authorities have no known motive in the case, Grady said.

Kazmierczak's former landlord, Jim Gordon, said Kazmierczak moved out of DeKalb in June 2007 and left a forwarding address in Champaign.

Gordon said he didn't recognize the picture of his yearlong former tenant "at all," but his records indicated that Kazmierczak "always paid on time, never a noise problem, left the place spotless."

The university sociology department's Web site said he was the recipient of a dean's award for his graduate work in sociology in 2006. He had been accepted for the graduate program that fall, the Web site said.

Kazmierczak also was vice president of the university's Academic Criminal Justice Association, according to the group's Web site, and worked on a paper on self-injury in prisons with the group's current president.

Kazmierczak's paper, titled "Self Injury in Correctional Settings: 'Pathology' of Prisons or Prisoners?" was published in 2006, according to the university's sociology Web site.

The Academic Criminal Justice Association provides "NIU students and members of the DeKalb community with an opportunity to learn about and promote knowledge and understanding of all areas of the criminal justice system, especially corrections and juvenile justice," the Web site says. Photo See photos of the victims and shooting aftermath »

DeKalb police asked the Polk County, Florida, Sheriff's Department to make "next of kin" death notification to Kazmierczak's father, Robert Kazmierczak, sheriff's spokeswoman Carrie Rodgers said Friday.

"Please leave me alone. I have no statement to make," Robert Kazmierczak told CNN affiliate WESH from the porch of his Lakeland, Florida, home.

"It's a very hard time. I'm a diabetic," he said before breaking down in tears.
Watch the father react to the media »

Kazmierczak had no arrest record and no known history of mental illness, and he had a valid state-required firearm ID card, so he had no problem buying the guns, one law enforcement source said.


Police said the only record of him in DeKalb County Circuit Court was a speeding ticket issued in December 2006. A police officer cited him amid snowy conditions for "failure to reduce speed -- resulting in an -- accident," in a white 2001 Honda. Kazmierczak was 6-foot-4 and 165 pounds, according to the record.

Kazmierczak pleaded guilty and paid a $75 fine. No one was injured in the accident, the record showed.

source

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Prayers and thoughts are with all family & loved ones of victims and shooter.


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Here We Go Again...Shooter Shoots Others, Then Self...sigh

Jim Killam/AP
BREAKING NEWS UPDATE:

A sixth person shot by a gunman at Northern Illinois University has died, the coroner's office tells CNN.

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Gunman kills 5, then self at Northern Illinois University

source


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.

Students are consoled outside Cole Hall at Northern Illinois University after a shooting on campus Thursday.

• More photos
• Watch the video

Witnesses in the geology class said "someone dressed in black came out from behind a screen in front of the classroom and opened fire with a shotgun," Peters said.

Lauren Carr said she was sitting in the third row of the lecture hall around 3 p.m. 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 a former graduate student in sociology at NIU, but 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, adding that police had no apparent motive.

Seventeen victims were brought to Kishwaukee Community Hospital in DeKalb, according to spokeswoman Theresa Komitas. One died, two were admitted and three were discharged; five are being evaluated and six others were transferred to other hospitals in critical condition. At least one male died at OSF St. Anthony Medical Center in Rockford, an official said.

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.

*sigh, smh*


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Misogynist, Reginald Potts, Jr Will Never Touch Another Woman...At least Not On The Street!

Another drumbeat to my blogmom Lynn, of Hicktown Press for this update.

Nailah's murder, Indicted like a Serial Killer

According to the Chicago Tribune

The man accused of killing pharmaceutical representative Nailah Franklin has been indicted on more than a dozen counts of murder and kidnapping, officials in the Cook County state's attorney's office said.

Reginald Potts Jr., 31, of Chicago faces 16 counts of first-degree murder, four counts of aggravated kidnapping and one count of vehicular hijacking and robbery, said Andy Conklin, a spokesman for the state's attorney's office.

Potts has been held without bail since he was charged last month in Franklin's death. Prosecutors may seek the death penalty, officials said.
Franklin's body was found Sept. 27, eight days after she was reported missing. Prosecutors have said Potts had been in an on-again, off-again relationship with Franklin, 28, for several months before her killing.

Potts is scheduled to be arraigned Jan. 10, Conklin said.

Nailah's images courtesy of Vanessa Byers

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This won't bring Nailah back, but at least the joker's no longer a danger to society. The bible says what u sow, you will also reap. And if Reginald's violent past is any indication of what he has to look forward to...well...I can't say I feel sorry for him.
Hopefully, even if all 20 charges doesn't stick, enough of them will that he'll never cross a threshold into society ever again.
I hope this news brings a small semblance of comfort to the women and families of those who were affected by this monster.

R.I.P. Nailah