Reports: Several people shot at Northern Illinois University

[Doug Huffman]

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http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080217/NATION/581694692/1002

School shooter did stint in mental health center

DEKALB, Ill. (AP) — Steven Kazmierczak, at 27, looked like an average schoolboy — except that his arms were covered with disturbing tattoos, including a doll from the horror movie "Saw."

Professors and students knew him as a bright, helpful scholar, but his past included a stint in a mental health center.

Many saw him as happy and stable, but he had developed a recent interest in guns and was involved in a troubled — possibly abusive — on-again, off-again relationship.

What people initially told police about the Northern Illinois shooter didn't add up, and now investigators are searching for answers to what triggered Thursday's bloody attack, in which five students were killed and 16 more injured before Kazmierczak committed suicide.

While searching for a motive, authorities questioned family and friends and tried to determine whether he had recently broken up with his longtime girlfriend.

One person who knew the couple, who spoke to the Associated Press on the condition of anonymity, said the couple's relationship was "really rocky."

"He was abusive, had a temper," the person said. "He didn't actually hit her; he would push her around."

He also had a history of mental illness and had become erratic in the past two weeks after he stopped taking his medication, said university Police Chief Donald Grady.

A former employee at a Chicago psychiatric treatment center said Kazmierczak had been placed there after high school by his parents. He used to cut himself and had resisted taking his medications, she said.

Kazmierczak spent more than a year at the Thresholds-Mary Hill House in the late 1990s, former house manager Louise Gbadamashi told the Associated Press. His parents placed him there after high school because he had become "unruly" at home, she said, though she couldn't remember any instances of him being violent.

"He never wanted to identify with being mentally ill," she said. "That was part of the problem."

Police went through the belongings he left at a DeKalb motel in search of clues. Authorities found a duffel bag, with the zippers glued shut, that Kazmierczak had left in the room, said Lt. Gary Spangler of the DeKalb Police Department. A bomb squad safely opened the bag Friday, Lt. Spangler said.

He would not comment on what was found in the bag. The Chicago Tribune, citing law-enforcement sources, reported that investigators found ammunition inside. Kazmierczak also left behind a laptop computer, which was seized by investigators.

The discoveries added to the puzzles surrounding Kazmierczak, a graduate student who had once studied at Northern Illinois University and later transferred to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

He also had a short-lived stint as a prison guard that ended abruptly when he didn't show up for work. He was in the Army for about six months in 2001-02, but he told a friend he'd gotten a psychological discharge.

Aaron Funsfinn, a friend who knew Kazmierczak at NIU, noted that Kazmierczak had become interested in guns in recent years, but said he wasn't alarmed by his friend's outspoken support for gun ownership.

"He was very rational and reasoned," said Mr. Funsfinn, 23.

Kazmierczak's godfather, Richard Grafer, said yesterday that his godson told him Tuesday that he had broken up with a girlfriend before Christmas, but "he wasn't distraught."

"He seemed fine, great. We were laughing and talking and telling jokes."

 

[imperialism2024]

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Looks like those blacklisted as "mentally ill" are the next group to be stripped of their rights.

I wonder how many "mentally ill" people stop taking medications and stop receiving treatment and don't go Postal®?

I guess the American public still isn't ready to accept that individuals have responsibilities, and that evil cannot be blamed on the inanimate.


ETA: It seems like this fear-mongering about mental health also is a consequence of the need for the unarmed to be able to take a proactive stance toward stopping violence. They realize that they can do nothing to stop a mass shooting in progress, so they can only, perhaps, take steps to prevent it. They like to think that there are "warning signs" that, if vigilantely watched for, will give them some control over their safety that they otherwise would not have.

 

[Doug Huffman]

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http://www.newsdaily.com/TopNews/UPI-1-20080220-10524600-bc-us-campusshooting.xml

Police lack motive in NIU shootingWONDER LAKE, Ill., Feb. 20 (UPI) -- Investigators in the Northern Illinois University shooting suspect the gunman took steps to cover background evidence.

Steven Kazmierczak, 27, opened fire in a geology class last Thursday at the university, killing five students before turning a gun on himself.
Kazmierczak removed the hard drive from his laptop and the computer chip from his cell phone, police officials said in the Chicago Tribune Wednesday. Police officials say the lack of background evidence possible stored on those devices means they lack clues to the crime.
"We don't have anything to know or even begin to assume a motive yet," said Northern Illinois University Police Chief Donald Grady.
Grady told the Tribune they have hundreds of people they want to interview, with Kazmierczak's girlfriend, Jessica Baty, at the top of the list. Grady said Baty's statements in an interview with CNN contradict what she said to police.
She told police investigators Kazmierczak was acting strange when he stopped taking his anti-depressant medication. Baty told CNN, however, "he was normal," adding that although he had a history of mild psychological problems, "he wasn't delusional."
NIU officials said they will have a memorial service on Sunday that is open to the public.

 

[Sleepless]

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imperialism2024 wrote:

Looks like those blacklisted as "mentally ill" are the next group to be stripped of their rights.

I wonder how many "mentally ill" people stop taking medications and stop receiving treatment and don't go Postal®?

I guess the American public still isn't ready to accept that individuals have responsibilities, and that evil cannot be blamed on the inanimate.


ETA: It seems like this fear-mongering about mental health also is a consequence of the need for the unarmed to be able to take a proactive stance toward stopping violence. They realize that they can do nothing to stop a mass shooting in progress, so they can only, perhaps, take steps to prevent it. They like to think that there are "warning signs" that, if vigilantely watched for, will give them some control over their safety that they otherwise would not have.

Well sometimes there might be "warning signs" but not always and question is also how do you interpret something because it could be a different interpretation from one person to another.

And most of the time there is no so-called warning signs but I guess people would like to keep telling themselves that there has to be something so that they can keep trying to believe it.

I believe that my pressure cooker scenario is very true and it is not just for mentally ill people, look at the movie I think it is called Falling Down and stars Michael Douglas, his life was like a pressure cooker and in the end the steam had to escape explosively and that is just what happened, even though this was a fictional movie it shows us that anybody can build up a pressure internally and then that pressure reaches critical level then something will happen unless the pressure is somehow released, so we got to figure out how to release our own pressure in our own way so we don't also explode.

 

[Doug Huffman]

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[font="Palatino, Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif"][size="+2"]School shooter studied Hamas, says friend[/size][/font]
[font="Palatino, Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif"][size="+1"]
'He would especially enjoy practicing his Arabic on me'[/size][/font]
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=57086

A former Northern Illinois University newspaper reporter says the killer who gunned down five innocent students in an apparently unprovoked attack liked to study Arabic and the terror group Hamas.

"'Assalamo alikum,' he [Steve Kazmierczak] would say to me, which means 'peace be with you' in Arabic," wrote Rasmieyh Abdelnabi in an essay published in the Chicago Sun-Times.

"He would proceed to ask me how I was doing and what I was up to, all in Arabic with a thick accent and a huge, excited smile," she continued.

She said the two met in class at the university, took several classes together over the years, and periodically kept in touch when they didn't share classes.

"Our topics of choice: foreign policy and the Middle East. He would especially enjoy practicing his Arabic on me. In 2004, NIU decided to offer a year's worth of Arabic classes. Steve took both classes without hesitation, excited as could be," she wrote.

Just over a week ago, Kazmierczak burst into a lecture hall and shot and killed five students and then himself. The New York Times reports he was taking an anti-anxiety drug and a sleeping aid in addition to the antidepressant Prozac.

But authorities have yet to announce what they believe could have been a motive for his attack, which left Daniel Parmenter, 20, of Westchester, Ill.; Catalina Garcia, 20, of Cicero, Ill.; Ryanne Mace, 19, of Carpentersville, Ill.; Julianna Gehant, 32, of Mendota, Ill.; and Gayle Dubowski, 20, of Carol Stream, Ill., dead.

On Thursday, a week after the attack, the university observed five minutes of silence, one minute for each of the victims.

Abdelnabi wrote that she initially could not believe Kazmierczak was the killer.
"But now I find myself wondering if I ever knew Steve, the man who shot and killed five people and then himself in a lecture hall at my alma mater, Northern Illinois University," she said.

She found out about the killings through a text message from a friend, and confirmed it online.

She said she acted as his "walking dictionary" occasionally. "'What does this word mean in English?' or 'What is this word in Arabic?'" she reported he would ask.

"Once we took a course called 'The Politics of the Middle East.' At the beginning of the course, our instructor informed us a research paper would be due by the end of the semester. Steve decided on Hamas, which is known mainly to the world as being a Palestinian terrorist group, which was the first thing that interested Steve about the group. But he also heard Hamas funded many social services, which also interested him. How could one group be put into two completely different categories, Steve would ask," she wrote.

"Unlike most of us, Steve started his research from day one, reading every book he could find on Hamas. He'd give me a status report when we saw each other in class. Steve said that his perception of Hamas changed with all the research he did," she said.

Authorities also have reported that Kazmierczak took several precautions that would impede investigators, including removing a memory card from his cell phone and removing the hard drive from his computer.

Hundreds of witnesses are being interviewed, but university officials have said it's unclear of Kazmierczak's reasons.

On a a blog called Muslim Watcher, writer Bruce Keegan noted Abdelnabi was the women's representative in the Muslim Student Association at NIU.