February
16, 2008 FBI Called In to help
Probe
US Campus Shooting By Parveen Chopra
New York
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is assisting authorities
investigate the shooting at Northern Illinois University (NIU) in
which a gunman opened fire on a class of 150, killing six and
injuring 15 before committing suicide.
Though the shooter has been identified as Steven Phillip Kazmierczak,
a 27-year-old former student of NIU at DeKalb, about 100 km from
Chicago, no motive has been established.
The NIU Police, in charge of the probe, called the FBI Thursday
evening, asking it to specifically process the crime scene. The FBI
team is also assisting with student witness interviews and shooter's
background investigation, an FBI note said.
According to FBI's crime scene recreation, Kazmierczak entered the
rear door of a lecture auditorium in Kohl Hall on the campus. A
class of approximately 150 students was in progress when he began
firing into the crowded auditorium. He then returned to the stage in
the auditorium and shot himself fatally.
He was a graduate student in sociology at the University of Illinois
in Champaign, Illinois.
Three victims died at the scene, two died later at hospitals.
Another 20 students were taken to hospital for treatment. Among the
dead are four women and among the injured graduate student Joseph
Peterson who was teaching the ill-fated geology class.
There was no Indian casualty, according to the Indian Students
Association at NIU. There are 300-350 Indians among the 25,000
students at the campus.
Kazmierczak's profile is baffling the authorities for it does not
match that of a mass murderer.
"By all accounts that we can tell right now he was a very good
student that the professors thought well of," said NIU president
John Peters Thursday evening.
Kazmierczak had no criminal record. But investigators learned that
he bought a shotgun and a handgun a week ago, adding to his arsenal
of two handguns bought last year.
He had a police-issued firearms owners' identification card, as
required by state law, but such cards are rarely issued to those
with recent mental health problems.
And he seems to have had psychiatric history. A former employee at a
Chicago psychiatric treatment centre has been quoted as saying that
Kazmierczak was placed there after high school by his parents. She
said he used to cut himself, and had resisted taking his
medications. He grew up in suburbun Chicago before his family moved
to Florida.
A police officer said Kazmierczak had become erratic in the past two
weeks after he had stopped taking his medication.
Authorities were also searching for a woman who police believe may
have been Kazmierczak's girlfriend. They were looking into whether
the couple recently broke up.
At Friday morning's televised press conference, Peters stated: "We
are dealing with a disturbed individual who intended to do harm on
this campus."
The NIU tragedy followed another campus shooting on Feb 8. A woman
shot two fellow students fatally before committing suicide at
Louisiana Technical College in Baton Rouge.
The worst campus massacre in the US history happened at Virginia
Tech university when last April a mentally disturbed South Korean
American student killed 32 students and faculty before killing
himself. Among the victims were an Indian student and an Indian
American professor.
Inevitably the NIU shooting will add fuel to the debate on liberal
gun laws in the country.
Presidential hopeful Barack Obama reacted by saying that the US must
do "whatever it takes" to eradicate gun violence. He said the
individual gun right that the Second Amendment to the Constitution
grants is also subject to common-sense regulations like background
checks.
The gun lobby is strong in the country. Fifty-five senators and 250
congressmen, and now Vice President Dick Cheney, have supported a
brief to have the Supreme Court overturn a ban on handguns by the
District of Columbia (Washington, D.C.).
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