Valentine's Day Massacre at NIU Seven dead, Cryptic messages found

The graduate student who massacred students in Northern Illinois University lecture hall bought three of his four guns on Saturday - indicating that he had been planning his assault for at least six days.

University sources identfied the gunman as Steve Kazmierczak, 27, a onetime undergraduate and award winning sociology graduate student at NIU. Fresh details about the latest campus carnage emerged as a seventh student died this morning from gunshot wounds suffered when the gunman opened fire Thursday afternoon at NIU in DeKalb, Illinois.

The bloodbath claimed a total of seven lives, including the gunman who also shot himself, and another 16 wounded.

Kazmierczak, dressed in black, was armed with three handguns and a shotgun as students took cover beneath desks and ran out of the lecture hall. He was later found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. At least 53 rounds were fired, police said.

In all, there were 23 casualties in the shooting, including the gunman. Several of the victims were taken to hospitals, where three later died. Four others, including the shooter, died at the scene of the gunfire. Peters said no note was found and no motive is yet known. However, last week a threat was scrawled on a NIU bathroom wall possibly predicting the attack:

“FEbruARy 7 has ended: 2-?-08 IT WILL HAPPEN”
(the FE and AR in February were underlined) *FEAR*

Last month graffiti was found on a restroom wall warning of a possible shooting. A spokesman said that the warning, which was discovered December 10, made reference to the Virginia Tech massacre, which killed 32 people at Virginia Tech. An unknown person posted the graffiti in the Grant Towers D residence hall. The graffiti included a racial slur and the notation, “What time? The VA tech shooter messed up w/ having only one shooter".

Law enforcement authorities told ABC News that Kazmierczak, bought most of his arsenal -- a 12 gauge shotgun, .22 pistol and a .9 mm pistol -- at a gun store in Champaign, Ill., on Saturday, indicating that he had planned the assault on the school for at least five days. A .45 Glock semi-automatic handgun was also found on the scene and linked to him.

Kazmierczak had no history of mental illness and no history of arrests, which would have allowed him to qualify to buy the guns under the state's gun laws, sources said.

By all accounts Kazmierczak was a good student. Serving as a member of the NIU Academic Criminal Justice Assocation, and a teaching aid as an undergraduate. In 2006 he recieved a Dean's Award from the sociology department.

Kazmierczak's father Robert lives in Lakeland Fl. and his mother died in Sept. 2006.

The shooting occurred during an introductory geology class at the university's Cole Hall in the campus center around 3:15 p.m. About 163 students were registered for the class.

"The assailant began firing into the assembled class from the stage — from the front," Peters said. Peters described the incident as a "very brief rapid-fire assault that ended with the gunman taking his own life."

An eyewitness told ABC News that the shooter was a white male, about 5'9", wearing a black beanie and a black coat. The shooter was carrying an ebony shotgun. He came in through the teacher's podium area and opened fire on 100 to 120 people who were attending the class.

NIU Police Chief Donald Grady said there was "no apparent motive at this time" for the shooting and it appeared the gunman had acted alone.

DeKalb County Coroner Dennis J. Miller on Friday 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.


External Links:

Legal Name: Steven Phillip Kazmierczak

E-mail: skazmierczak@gmail.com

Alpha Kappa Delta – Sociology Honor Society (Northern Illinois University)

“Self-Injury in Correctional Settings” by Steve Kazmierczak

His LiveJournal page (still active)

Wikipedia Entry on Steve Kazmierczak:

Stephen Phillip "Steve" Kazmierczak (1980 - February 14, 2008) was the perpetrator of the Northern Illinois University shooting. He graduated from the university in 2006, and had been enrolled as a graduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign since the spring of 2007. He was 27 when he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound after killing five and wounding sixteen other people.

Early life and education

A native of Elk Grove Village, Illinois, Kazmierczak attended Elk Grove High School where he graduated from in 1998. He later went on to attend Northern Illinois University where he was a student of Sociology until transferring to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He was on the dean's list.

He was a current graduate student of Social Work at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He had received the Dean's award from NIU in 2006 and was considered a stand-out, well received student. Campus police describe him as a "fairly normal" and "unstressed person." He is a co-author of the academic paper referenced in the Tribune article, "Self-Injury In Correctional Settings: "Pathology" of Prisons or of Prisoners?"

Kazmierczak was a graduate student at the School of Social Work, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; he was Vice-President of the NIU Academic Criminal Justice Association in 2005 and had written on the U.S. correctional system, specifically prisons.

The Shooting

Kazmierczak's behavior seemed to become more erratic in the weeks leading up to the shooting, and it is believed he stopped taking medication beforehand.

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(AP Photo) An apparent shooting victim is treated for injuries on the Northern Illinois University campus Thursday afternoon Feb. 14, 2008.