Illinois College Applied Lessons From Massacre At Virginia Tech

By Kari Lydersen and Theresa Vargas
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, February 16, 2008

DEKALB, Ill., Feb. 15 -- If there were lessons learned after the Virginia Tech massacre, they were: Lock down and notify. Virginia Tech officials did neither until hours after the first shots sounded across the Blacksburg campus in April. Northern Illinois University did not make the same mistake Thursday.

But the university's actions still could not stop a man armed with powerful rapid-fire weapons and the intent to kill as many people as possible, higher-education and safety experts said Friday.

The Virginia Tech killings, in which an emotionally disturbed student fatally shot 32 people, prompted soul-searching, safety reviews and the revamping of danger response plans at colleges and universities nationwide. Thursday's shootings at Northern Illinois provided the first test of one of those plans.

By many preliminary accounts, the university did well: Within 30 seconds of a report of shots fired at Cole Hall, the first officer was on the scene. But he was too late. Stephen P. Kazmierczak, a former graduate student at the school, armed with a 12-gauge shotgun and three pistols, had already sprayed more than 50 rounds of buckshot and bullets at panicked students before turning one of his weapons on himself. Six people, including the shooter, were killed, and 16 were wounded.

"We were dealing with a disturbed individual who intended to do harm on this campus," the university's president, John G. Peters, said Friday. "We did everything we could to ensure the safety of this university."

Law enforcement officials said they know little about Kazmierczak's motives. "We have found no notes at this time," said Donald Grady, the campus police chief. "We have no idea what the motive was."

But sketchy information emerged Friday that 10 days before the attack, Kazmierczak ordered the Remington shotgun and a Glock 9mm pistol from a gun dealer in Champaign, Ill., picking up the weapons on Feb. 9 after a five-day waiting period.

On the same day he bought those firearms, Kazmierczak went online and purchased two Glock 33-round magazines that would allow his pistol to carry many more than the standard number of bullets. He bought the magazines from the same Internet company that had sold Seung Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech killer, a .22-caliber handgun.

"I felt just shocked, like I had been hit with a truck," said Eric Thompson, president of Tgscom, a licensed firearms dealer in Green Bay, Wis., which operates the Web site. "There's over 90,000 licensed dealers in the U.S., and what are the chances that my company is involved with two mass murders inside of a year? I'm just dumbfounded."

Kevin Cronin, a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, identified the two other weapons Kazmierczak carried as a Sig Sauer 9mm pistol and a Hi-Point .380-caliber pistol. Officials later said Kazmierczak had purchased those weapons earlier from the same gun store in Champaign.

Grady also told reporters that Kazmierczak had stopped taking medication and had been behaving erratically recently, though Grady did not identify the medication or the illness for which he was being treated.

University officials said Kazmierczak was a graduate student at NIU in DeKalb in spring 2007 but had left the school and enrolled at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "There were no red flags," Grady told reporters. "He was an outstanding student. We had no indication at all that this would be the type of person to engage in such activities."

The gunman's father, Robert, did not shed any light on his son's actions. Emerging briefly from his single-story house in Lakeland, Fla., he told reporters: "Please leave me alone. I have no statement to make and no comment. . . . It's a very hard time for me. I'm a diabetic, and I don't want to go into a relapse." He then broke down in tears and went back inside.

According to Northern Illinois University records, Kazmierczak formerly served as vice president of the school's Academic Criminal Justice Association, a group dedicated to promoting knowledge of the criminal justice system, especially corrections and juvenile justice.

Kazmierczak chose mental health as his specialization in the School of Social Work at the University of Illinois, where he enrolled in a master's program last summer after leaving NIU. Two assistant professors there said they were not aware that he had any mental health issues and noticed nothing out of the ordinary about his behavior during their last casual interactions with him, in December and January.

Authorities identified the dead students, all Illinois residents, as Gayle Dubowski, 20, of Carol Stream; Catalina Garcia, 20, of Cicero; Julianna Gehant, 32, of Mendota; Ryanne Mace, 19, of Carpentersville; and Daniel Parmenter, 20, of Westchester.

The class instructor, a graduate student, was wounded but is expected to recover, officials said.

Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D) said local, state and federal authorities will conduct a thorough investigation. "If there is a way where this tragedy could have been anticipated or stopped beforehand, we will find it," he said.

Preliminary assessments from students, safety experts and officials at other schools indicate that Northern Illinois University acted promptly and correctly during the incident.

University officials, using e-mail, the school's Web site and voice messages, immediately warned the campus community to stay put.

Students overwhelmingly said they were impressed with the school's response and did not think that school authorities could have done anything more to prevent the attack.

"Their response time was amazing. People might say they are just university cops, but they were great," said Jeff Myers, 20, a communications and military science major from Indianapolis. "They had this whole campus on lockdown in seven minutes."

The situation was much different after the Virginia Tech incident, when the university was sharply criticized for not notifying the campus community that two students had been found dead in a dormitory until hours later. In that time, Cho chained the doors at Norris Hall and went from classroom to classroom, shooting.

Although Virginia Tech is about 700 miles from the DeKalb campus, that the two are now permanently connected was clear by just a glance at online condolences. One Facebook message board bore the title "Hokies for NIU Huskies," and Virginia Tech voices topped the list on another titled "Once a Huskie, Always a Huskie. We're in This Together."

"From a Hokie who knows all too well the horrors you went through today, you are all in my thoughts and prayers," one student wrote. "Stay strong and lean on your fellow Huskies for support. It's what got us through here at Tech."

Vargas reported from Washington. Staff writers William Branigin and Josh White and staff researcher Madonna Lebling contributed to this report from Washington.