Gunman kills five at US college

A man has killed five students and himself during a shooting spree at a US college.According to reports, the man - identified as Stephen Kazmierczak, 27, a former student at Northern Illinois University - had stopped taking medication and become erratic in the last two weeks.He returned to the university to carry out shootings, hiding a shotgun in a guitar case as he entered a lecture hall, police said.His motive is not known, campus police chief Don Grady said. There were also no indications that he had any relationship with any of his victims who were mowed down as he fired more than 50 shots in a matter of seconds from a lecture hall stage.Local officials revised the death toll downward, saying Kazmierczak killed five students, not six as they had earlier reported, and wounded many more.In all 21 people were shot before he turned one of his four guns on himself.Mr Grady said Kazmierczak had apparently been taking medication but stopped and had become "somewhat erratic" in the last two weeks. He did not describe what kind of medication was involved."There were no red flags. He was an outstanding student, an awarded student who was even revered by faculty and fellow students," Grady said. "A fairly normal, undistressed person."Mr Grady said the shooter had been enrolled at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the central part of the state, far removed from Northern, a 25,000-student school 65 miles west of Chicago.A federal firearms agent said Kazmierczak bought a shotgun and a handgun nine days ago in Champaign, apparently legally.Student Desiree Smith said: "I was sitting there, we had ten minutes left of class, taking notes, all of a sudden I just see this man out of the corner of my eye, he just seemed to appear, he was dressed all in black, he had a black ski cap on, and then I saw him shoot, he aimed at our professor. I did see our professor shot in the arm."Student Zach Seward said: "I ducked behind the seats and ran out the door. As I was running, I just kept waiting for something to hit me in the back. I didn't know where to run, tried to decide where it's safe to be, and there isn't anywhere safe."In the past week, there have been four similar shootings. On February 8, a nursing student shot dead two women and killed herself in front of horrified classmates at Louisiana Technical College in Baton Rouge.In Memphis, Tennessee, a 17-year-old is accused of shooting and critically wounding a fellow student on Monday during a high school gym class, and the 15-year-old victim of a shooting at an Oxnard, California, junior high school has been declared brain dead.Also, on February 7, a man opened fire on a city council meeting in the St Louis suburb of Kirkwood, killing five people before he was shot dead by police.© Independent Television News Limited 2008. All rights reserved.

» More on this story... «

ITN | February 15, 2008