DEKALB, Ill. — Police say the gunman in the Northern Illinois University shooting rampage had stopped taking his medication recently and had become erratic before he killed five people and committed suicide.\nDeKalb County coroner Rusty Miller says there had been confusion over the death toll. He is now correcting himself, saying that five people were killed, not six.
DEKALB, Ill. — The gunman who killed six people in a Northern Illinois University lecture hall before committing suicide was identified Friday as 27-year-old former student Steven Kazmierczak, according to Florida authorities and a university official familiar with the investigation.\nPolk County, Fla., sheriff's officials said they were asked to notify the suspect's father — Robert Kazmierczak of Lakeland, Fla. — of his son's death.\n"His son, Steven, was the shooting suspect at Northern Illinois University," said Carrie Rodgers, spokeswoman for the sheriff's office.\nIllinois authorities have not confirmed the suspect's identity, but a university official told The Associated Press it is the younger Kazmierczak. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the identity has not been officially released.\nThe motive of the killer was still not known, officials said. The gunman also wounded 15 people in Thursday's attack, which sent panicked students fleeing for the exits.\n"There is no note or threat that I know of," NIU President John Peters said on Friday ABC's "Good Morning America." "By all accounts that we can tell right now (he) was a very good student that the professors thought well of."\nThe shooter had been a graduate student in sociology at Northern Illinois as recently as spring 2007, but was not currently enrolled at the 25,000-student campus, Peters said. He also said the gunman had no record of police contact or an arrest record while attending the university, about 65 miles west of Chicago.\nHe was currently enrolled as a graduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said NIU spokeswoman Melanie Magara.\nDeKalb County Coroner Dennis J. Miller released the identities of the four victims who died in his county: Daniel Parmenter, 20, of Westchester; Catalina Garcia, 20, of Cicero; Ryanne Mace, 19, of Carpentersville; and Julianna Gehant, 32, of Meridan.\nTwo other victims died after being transferred to hospitals in other counties, Miller said. Winnebago County Coroner Sue Fiduccia said a female victim died in her jurisdiction but has not been identified pending notification of family.\nWitnesses said the gunman, dressed in black and wearing a stocking cap, emerged from behind a screen on the stage of 200-seat Cole Hall and opened fire just as the class was about to end around 3 p.m. Officials said 162 students were registered for the class but it was unknown how many were there Thursday.\nAllyse Jerome, 19, a sophomore from Schaumburg, said the gunman burst through a stage door and pulled out a gun.\n"Honestly, at first everyone thought it was a joke," Jerome said. Everyone hit the floor, she said. Then she got up and ran, but tripped. She said she felt like "an open target."\n"He could've decided to get me," Jerome said. "I thought for sure he was gonna get me."\nLauren Carr said she was sitting in the third row when she saw the shooter walk through a door on the right-hand side of the stage, pointing a gun straight ahead.\n"I personally Army-crawled halfway up the aisle," said Carr, a 20-year-old sophomore. "I said I could get up and run or I could die here."\nShe said a student in front of her was bleeding, "but he just kept running."\n"I heard this girl scream, 'Run, he's reloading the gun!'"\nMore than a hundred students cried and hugged as they gathered outside the Phi Kappa Alpha house early Friday to remember Parmenter, the 20-year-old sophomore from Elmhurst, who was one of those killed.\n"I'm not angry," his stepfather, Robert Greer, told the Tribune. "I'm just sad, and I know that right now what I need to do is comfort my wife."\nThe 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.\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. Peters said he knew of no connection between that incident and Thursday's attack.
Associated Press writers Carla K. Johnson, Michael Tarm, David Mercer, Martha Irvine, Nguyen Huy Vu, Sarah Rafi, Mike Robinson and photographer Charles Rex Arbogast contributed to this report.
