Gunman opens fire in lecture hall at Northern Illinois University, several injured

DEKALB, Ill. – A gunman opened fire in a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University on Thursday, injuring as many as 15 people before he killed himself, authorities and the school said.\n“Police are confirming that the shooter is dead by a self-inflicted gunshot,” the school said on its Web site.\nThe university issued a statement on its Web site about an hour after the 3 p.m. shooting that “the immediate danger has passed. The gunman is no longer a threat.”\nKishwaukee Community Hospital spokeswoman Theresa Komitas told WLS-TV in Chicago it received 17 victims all with wounds from the shooting or flying debris, including three with serious injuries. She said she knew of no deaths at the hospital.\nGeorge 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.”\nHe described the scene immediately following the incident as terrifying and chaotic.\n“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.”\nWitnesses 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.\n“It was almost like he knew who he wanted to shoot,” Robinson said. “He knew who and where he wanted to be firing at.”\nAll classes were canceled Thursday night and the 25,000-student 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.\nDominique Broxton, 22, a student from Oak Park, told the Chicago Tribune she could see two wounded students from her dorm room.\n“The ambulance took away two students on the ground right outside my dorm,” she said. “I don’t know them. They looked bloody.”\nShe said she saw a lot of confusion. \n“Students were running. People really didn’t know what was going on,” she said. “There is an intercom system inside the dorm. Someone came on and stated that someone had been caught. They said they caught the shooter and that we should remain calm and stay in our rooms. I am in my room now.”\nThe 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.\nThe shooting was the fourth at a U.S. school within a week.\nOn 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.