Gunman at Illinois College Kills 5 Students, Wounds 16

"He was quiet. He stood on the stage in the front of the room," student Sheila Cosgrove told Chicago radio station WBBM, describing him as a lean, tall white man. "I saw him holding the gun and it was huge. I thought it was fake, and then I realized he was actually shooting at people, and I got down."

A student seated behind her was shot, Cosgrove said. Terrified, she crawled down an aisle to get to the door, soaking her jeans in blood, and scrambled out of the building. Emerging into a winter afternoon, she had left behind her coat, wallet and cellphone. She ran with a crowd of fleeing people toward the student center, she said.

George Gaynor, another student in the room, described the scene to the campus newspaper Northern Star, calling the scene terrifying and chaotic.

"Some girl got hit in the eye; a guy got hit in the leg," Gaynor said.

The gunman was "shooting at random, it would appear, into a group of people and not targeting anyone," university spokeswoman Melanie Magara told reporters at an evening news conference.

The gunman killed himself before he had used up his ammunition, officials said.

"Campus police report that the immediate danger has passed," read an e-mail from the university to the campus community. "The gunman is no longer a threat."

Even though the bloodshed was confined to Cole Hall, fear and panic spread through nearby buildings during and immediately after the shooting spree.

"People were running at me and screaming and freaking out," said Angela Siener, 24, a first-year law student who had just walked out of the building about 100 yards from Cole Hall. "They were saying there was a shooter. I decided not to go to the parking garage, because it didn't seem safe, so I went back into the law library and we were locked in for, like, two hours."

Inside the library, more than 50 students gathered around computers. They searched for news and to send messages to friends and relatives, and also tried to use their mobile telephones.

Heather Garay, 24, was still in class when a man burst in and announced that someone had opened fire inside nearby Cole Hall.

"He apologized for interrupting class and then said something about a shooting. It was a double-take situation," Garay said. "We all moved to one side of the classroom and tried to lock the door, but it didn't have a lock."