Northern Illinois University has released a chilling 322-page report about the day a former student opened fire in a lecture hall, killing five students before turning the gun on himself.
The report offers a frightening account of what happened in the lecture room in Cole Hall Feb. 14, 2008, as Steven Kazmierczak, wearing a black watch cap and a T-shirt with “Terrorist” across the front, kicked in the door and strode to the center of the stage, loaded down with a sawed-off shotgun, three handguns and a knife.
Kazmierczak shot the professor before turning his fire to the crowd of about 120 students seated before him.
Many students already were running for the doors. Others hid between the rows of seats.
Others “merely sat where they were, apparently unable to respond to the crisis at hand,” according to the report.
After firing three times, he paused.
“He’s reloading,” students shouted as they ran and some of them left their places of hiding and started to run, the report states.
When he ran out of ammunition for the shotgun, he pulled out a 9 mm Glock semi-automatic pistol.
“Kazmierczak is reported to have walked up and down the west aisle and directly in front of or on the stage, firing the weapon as he went,” according to the report.
The investigative summary includes the timeline of events and a transcript of radio traffic during the Feb. 14, 2008, incident.
“We realize this report brings neither comfort nor closure, but by sharing what we learned while dealing with this tragedy, we add information to the body of research on mass shootings that seem to increasingly plague our society,” NIU President John Peters said in a letter attached to the report.
The report acknowledges that questions about the incident remain unanswered: Did anyone else know of Kazmierczak’s plan? Why did Kazmierczak choose NIU? Why did he choose Cole Hall? Where are the hard drive from his computer and the SIM card from his telephone?
“Therefore, as it is with other similar high profile cases of this magnitude and complexity, the investigation continues until the NIU Department of Public Safety is confident that every possible question has been answered to its satisfaction and that everything that could be done has been. There are issues of consequence having significant implications for this case that may never be resolved. Consequently, closure ... may never be fully realized.”
The report remembers the students who were killed: 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.
Rockford Register Star
