History > 2008 > USA > Gun violence (II)

From left,

Sarah Payton of Hampshire, Ill., 21,

Christina Kouyoumdzoglou of Athens, Greece, 21,

and Brianna Tyler of Park Forest, Ill., 20,

students at Northern Illinois University,

took part in a prayer vigil.

Gunman Slays Five in Illinois at a University

NYT

15.2.2008
 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/15/us/15shoot.html

Boy’s Killing,

Labeled a Hate Crime,

Stuns a Town

February 23, 2008
The New York Times
By REBECCA CATHCART

OXNARD, Calif. — Hundreds of mourners gathered at a church here on Friday to remember an eighth-grade boy who was shot to death inside a junior high school computer lab by a fellow student in what prosecutors are calling a hate crime.

In recent weeks, the victim, Lawrence King, 15, had said publicly that he was gay, classmates said, enduring harassment from a group of schoolmates, including the 14-year-old boy charged in his death.

“God knit Larry together and made him wonderfully complex,” the Rev. Dan Birchfield of Westminster Presbyterian Church told the crowd as he stood in front of a large photograph of the victim. “Larry was a masterpiece.”

The shooting stunned residents of Oxnard, a laid-back middle-class beach community just north of Malibu. It also drew a strong reaction from gay and civil rights groups.

“We’ve never had school violence like this here before, never had a school shooting,” said David Keith, a spokesman for the Oxnard Police Department.

Les Winget, 44, whose daughter Nikki, 13, attends the school, called the crime “absolutely unbelievable.”

Jay Smith, executive director of the Ventura County Rainbow Alliance, where Lawrence took part in Friday night group activities for gay teenagers, said, “We’re all shocked that this would happen here.”

The gunman, identified by the police as Brandon McInerney, “is just as much a victim as Lawrence,” said Masen Davis, executive director of the Transgender Law Center. “He’s a victim of homophobia and hate.”

The law center is working with Equality California and the Gay-Straight Alliance to push for a legislative review of anti-bias policies and outreach efforts in California schools. According to the 2005 California Healthy Kids Survey, junior high school students in the state are 3 percent more likely to be harassed in school because of sexual orientation or gender identity than those in high school.

That finding is representative of schools across the country, said Stephen Russell, a University of Arizona professor who studies the issues facing lesbian, gay, transgender and bisexual youth.

Mr. Davis said “more and more kids are coming out in junior high school and expressing gender different identities at younger ages.”

“Unfortunately,” he added, “society has not matured at the same rate.”

Prosecutors charged Brandon as an adult with murder as a premeditated hate crime and gun possession. If convicted, he faces a sentence of 52 years to life in prison.

A senior deputy district attorney, Maeve Fox, would not say why the authorities added the hate crime to the murder charge.

In interviews, classmates of the two boys at E. O. Green Junior High School said Lawrence had started wearing mascara, lipstick and jewelry to school, prompting a group of male students to bully him.

“They teased him because he was different,” said Marissa Moreno, 13, also in the eighth grade. “But he wasn’t afraid to show himself.”

Lawrence wore his favorite high-heeled boots most days, riding the bus to school from Casa Pacifica, a center for abused and neglected children in the foster care system, where he began living last fall. Officials would not say anything about his family background other than that his parents, Greg and Dawn King, were living and that he had four siblings. Lawrence started attending E. O. Green last winter, said Steven Elson, the center’s chief executive. “He had made connections here,” Dr. Elson said. “It’s just a huge trauma here. It’s emotionally very charged.”

Since the shooting, hundreds of people have sent messages to a memorial Web site where photographs show Lawrence as a child with a gap in his front teeth, and older, holding a caterpillar in the palm of his hand.

“He had a character that was bubbly,” Marissa said. “We would just laugh together. He would smile, then I would smile and then we couldn’t stop.”

On the morning of Feb. 12, Lawrence was in the school’s computer lab with 24 other students, said Mr. Keith, the police spokesman. Brandon walked into the room with a gun and shot Lawrence in the head, the police said, then ran from the building. Police officers caught him a few blocks away.

Unconscious when he arrived at the hospital, Lawrence was declared brain dead the next day but kept on a ventilator to preserve his organs for donation, said the Ventura County medical examiner, Armando Chavez. He was taken off life support on Feb. 14.

Brandon is being held at a juvenile facility in Ventura on $770,000 bail, said his lawyer, Brian Vogel. He will enter a plea on March 21.

At a vigil for Lawrence last week in Ventura, 200 people carried glow sticks and candles in paper cups as they walked down a boardwalk at the beach and stood under the stars. Melissa Castillo, 13, recalled the last time she had seen Lawrence. “He was walking through the lunch room, wearing these awesome boots,” she said. “I ran over to him and said, ‘Your boots are so cute!’ He was like, ‘Yeah, I know.’ ”

She raised her chin and arched an eyebrow in imitation. “ ‘If you want cute boots,’ ” Lawrence had told her, “ ‘you have to buy the expensive kind.’ ” His boots had cost $30.

“So, for Lawrence,” Melissa said to five girls holding pink and green glow sticks, “we have to go get the expensive kind.”

    Boy’s Killing, Labeled a Hate Crime, Stuns a Town, NYT, 23.2.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/23/us/23oxnard.html

Victim’s Fiancée

Struggles to Cope as Trial Approaches

February 21, 2008
The New York Times
By JOHN ELIGON

Dozens of photographs decorate the narrow living room of Nicole Paultre Bell’s home in Far Rockaway, Queens, but one catches the eye more quickly than the rest.

It is a 16-by-20-inch picture that shows Ms. Bell, her head tilted and her grin wide, sitting on the floor while her fiancé, Sean Bell, is on the couch. She is holding Jordyn, their younger daughter, while their older child, Jada, sits with him.

The last photograph of Mr. Bell with his family, it is the emotional centerpiece of a home that features a rustic wooden coffee table, a cushy sofa and slivers of sunlight. For Ms. Bell, her home in this quiet residential neighborhood is a reprieve from the whirlwind of the last 15 months.

Early on Nov. 25, 2006, detectives fatally shot Mr. Bell, 23, near a strip club in Queens, hours before he was to marry Ms. Bell.

The officers said they believed Mr. Bell and his friends were going to retrieve a gun and shoot at another group at the club. When Mr. Bell seemed to try to flee or ram the officers with his car, the police said, the officers opened fire, killing him and wounding the two friends with him in a barrage of 50 bullets. The officers said they believed they were being fired upon, but no gun was found in the car.

The shooting has drawn national attention, with people from Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to the Rev. Al Sharpton questioning the police’s actions.

Ms. Bell, who took her fiancé’s name after his death, has received condolences from the famous, including Spike Lee and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. She has received letters from entire elementary school classes. She has appeared on “Larry King Live” and been interviewed for Essence magazine.

Now, Ms. Bell, 23, is preparing for what could be another difficult chapter.

On Monday, three of the five police officers involved in the shooting will go on trial before a judge for the death of Mr. Bell. Detectives Michael Oliver and Gescard F. Isnora face charges of first- and second-degree manslaughter. Detective Marc Cooper faces two misdemeanor charges of reckless endangerment.

Ms. Bell said she planned to be in the courtroom every day.

“Nothing was worse than the day I lost him,” Ms. Bell said. “So if I have to sit through court for two months, hear evidence or things I may not have known, it’s O.K. I’m willing to do that.”

Ms. Bell has performed a difficult juggling act since Mr. Bell’s death. She has had to deal with her emotions and legal proceedings (she testified in front of the grand jury that indicted the officers, and she is part of a lawsuit pending against the police, the city and the officers involved in the shooting), while raising two young girls by herself.

Jordyn, 20 months, is too young to remember her father, Ms. Bell said, but she often points to pictures of her father and says, “Daddy.”

Jada, 5, is constantly asking questions.

“Why did God just take Daddy? Why didn’t he take the whole family?” she asked once.

Ms. Bell says she sometimes has to step into another room away from her daughter to cry.

“I can’t show that to my daughter,” she said. “I want her to see me as a strong woman.”

Ms. Bell has been a stay-at-home mother since Sean’s death. She receives financial support from the National Action Network, Mr. Sharpton’s organization, and from family members. She drives Jada, who is in kindergarten, to school every morning and picks her up every afternoon.

She cannot help thinking of the things Mr. Bell has missed already — Jordyn’s learning to walk, Jada’s perfect score on a spelling test — and those he will miss in the future.

Barely a moment goes by, Ms. Bell says, when she is not thinking of her fiancé. Driving home late, she recalls his advice not to stop for gas in the dark. Deciding what to buy at the grocery, she thinks of what he would want her to get.

The most difficult time of the day, Ms. Bell said, is bedtime. She said she used to lie in his arms and they would talk.

“You don’t sleep the same anymore,” Ms. Bell said. “Any sudden noise, I’m up.”

Ms. Bell still wears her engagement ring and wedding band. She also occasionally wears a small gold pin inscribed with Mr. Bell’s name and the words, “See you later.”

“Sean always told us don’t say ‘Bye,’ ” Ms. Bell said. “ ‘Bye’ means forever.”

Memories of the night Mr. Bell died still rattle Ms. Bell. She cried as she recounted the night.

Mr. Bell was out preparing for his bachelor party, while she was having a bridal shower at her mother’s home. She said her shower ended around 9 p.m., and she fell asleep a short time later. She woke up in the middle of the night and saw that she had missed a call from Sean at 1:11 a.m.

“I think about that time all the time,” she said. “I just wish I didn’t miss that call.”

It would have been a final chance to hear his voice. Her mother woke her around 4 a.m., saying that her brother-in-law called and said there had been an accident. They rushed to the hospital.

When she arrived, Ms. Bell said, her brother-in-law told her that the police had shot Mr. Bell. She became nauseated. About an hour later, she said, a doctor told her that Mr. Bell was dead.

“No. No. Not Sean. Not him,” Ms. Bell recalled telling the doctor.

It has only been about two months, Ms. Bell said, since she accepted that the man she was to marry would not be coming home, that he was not on some long trip.

Now, repeatedly using the word “justice,” Ms. Bell said she was eager to hear from the men who shot her fiancé.

“I am looking forward to hearing from their mouth what happened,” she said.

Regardless of the judge’s decision, Ms. Bell said, “I believe that God will have the last word.”

For Father’s Day, Ms. Bell said, Jada and her classmates made presents in preschool. Some children whose fathers were not around wanted to give their presents to their mothers. Jada, who made a wooden jewelry box, wanted to give it to her father.

She cut out one of her school pictures and wrote “I love you, Daddy” and “I miss you” on the back of it. She placed it in the box and left it at her father’s grave. As she left, she waved and said, “See you later.”

    Victim’s Fiancée Struggles to Cope as Trial Approaches, NYT, 21.2.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/21/nyregion/21bride.html

States consider gun-access laws

 

20 February 2008
USA Today
By Charisse Jones

Some companies in several states could be barred from telling their employees to keep their guns at home if lawmakers prevail in a battle that pits gun rights advocates against private businesses.

While no state allows workers to carry weapons into the workplace, at least six states — Alaska, Kansas, Kentucky, Minnesota, Mississippi and Oklahoma — have enacted legislation prohibiting some employers from barring their workers from leaving guns locked in their cars in employee parking lots.

Now, several more states are considering such laws. Supporters say licensed gun owners should have access to their weapons in case they need them for self-defense on the trek to and from home.

If employers can ban guns from workers' cars, "it would be a wrecking ball to the Second Amendment," which governs the right to bear arms, says Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association (NRA).

Many business organizations and gun-control advocates argue, however, that such laws clash with employers' responsibility to maintain safe workplaces and their right to determine what to allow on their private property.

These laws are "a systematic attempt to force guns into every nook and cranny in society and prohibit anyone, whether it's private employers (or) college campuses … from barring guns from their premises," says Brian Siebel, senior attorney for the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

There were 516 workplace homicides — 417 of them caused by gunfire — in 2006, the most recent tally available, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. "There's certainly no need to allow guns in these parking lots," Siebel says. "The increased risks are obvious."

The moves to ensure that workers can have guns locked up in workplace parking lots come at a time of high-stakes debate over gun rights. The Supreme Court is likely to rule this year on whether Washington, D.C., can continue its 32-year-old ban on residents owning handguns.

States considering bills to expand workers' gun rights:

•Arizona. State Rep. Jonathan Paton, a Republican, says he sponsored his bill last month after a constituent told him he drives isolated roads to work but is not allowed to keep a handgun in his car. "It just comes down to the right of self-defense," Paton says.

•Tennessee. The proposed legislation, introduced in January, excludes correctional facilities and properties owned by the federal government. An amendment may be added to allow businesses that have secure parking areas that are less prone to crime to ban guns there.

"I respect property and business rights," says state Sen. Paul Stanley, a Republican sponsoring the bill. "But I also think that some issues need to overshadow this. … We have a right to keep and bear arms."

•Georgia. The legislature is considering a bill to allow licensed gun owners to leave their gun in a locked vehicle on their company's parking lot if the employer permits it.

The NRA and other gun rights advocates began pushing the parking lot legislation after Weyerhaeuser in 2002 fired several of its Oklahoma employees when guns were found in their vehicles, violating company policy.

Two years later, Oklahoma's Legislature passed a law prohibiting employersfrom banning guns locked inside parked cars. A federal judge in October issued a permanent injunction against the law, a decision being appealed.

The laws are being considered as the number of states that allow a law-abiding adult to carry a concealed gun in public has reached 40, legal experts say.

"It's part of the general movement to allow people to have guns for self-defense not only at home, but in public places where they're most likely needed," says Eugene Volokh, a professor at UCLA School of Law who specializes in gun policy. He says employers face more constraints than in the past.

LaPierre says laws that allow people holding proper permits to carry firearms for personal protection are largely nullified when employers can prohibit workers from locking a gun in their parked cars. "Saying you can protect yourself with a firearm when you get off work late at night is meaningless if you can't keep it in the trunk of your car when you're at work," he says.

Some constitutional law experts say the Second Amendment does not give gun owners a constitutionally protected right to carry their weapons onto somebody else's private property when the owner doesn't want them to.

"If I said to somebody, 'You can't bring your gun into my house,' that person's rights wouldn't be violated," says Mark Tushnet, a Harvard Law School professor.

The American Bar Association sides with business owners, supporting "the traditional property rights of private employers and other private property owners to exclude" people with firearms.

Steve Halverson, head of Jacksonville-based construction company Haskell, says business owners should be able to decide whether to allow weapons in their parking lots. "I object to anyone telling me that we can't … take steps necessary to protect our employees," says Halverson, who enforces safety measures ranging from banning guns to requiring workers to wear hard hats.

"The context is workplace safety, and that's why it's important," he says. "The larger issue is property rights, and whether you as a homeowner and I as a business owner ought to have the right to say what comes onto our property."

    States consider gun-access laws, UT, 20.2.2008, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-02-20-gunlaws_N.htm

Gunman's Friendly Exterior Masked Past

February 16, 2008
Filed at 11:49 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

DEKALB, Ill. (AP) -- Steven Kazmierczak checked into a hotel near Northern Illinois University three days before his deadly shooting spree at the campus, paying cash and signing in under only his first name, the hotel manager said Saturday.

Kazmierczak was last seen at the Travelodge on Tuesday, hotel manager Jay Patel said. Cigarette butts, empty energy drink and cold medicine containers littered the room Friday.

Authorities found a duffel bag, with the zippers glued shut, that Kazmierczak had left in the room, DeKalb police Lt. Gary Spangler said. A bomb squad safely opened the bag Friday, he said.

The Chicago Tribune reported Saturday that investigators found ammunition inside the bag, citing law enforcement sources. Spangler would not comment on what was in the bag.

Kazmierczak also left a laptop computer, which was seized by investigators, Patel told The Associated Press.

''It's scary,'' said Patel, adding that he called police when he found the laptop and clothes.

The discoveries added to the puzzles surrounding Kazmierczak, a 27-year-old graduate student some called quiet, dependable and fun-loving. He returned to his alma mater on Valentine's Day and killed five people before turning a gun on himself.

A former employee at a Chicago psychiatric treatment center said Kazmierczak's parents placed him there after high school. She said he used to cut himself, and had resisted taking his medications.

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

Exactly what set Kazmierczak off -- and why he picked his former university and that particular lecture hall -- remained a mystery.

On Thursday, Kazmierczak, armed with three handguns and a pump-action shotgun, stepped from behind a screen on the lecture hall's stage and opened fire on a geology class. He killed five students before committing suicide.

University Police Chief Donald Grady said Friday that Kazmierczak had become erratic in the past two weeks after he stopped taking his medication.

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, she said.

Gbadamashi said 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.''

The attack was baffling to many who knew him.

''Steve was the most gentle, quiet guy in the world. ... He had a passion for helping people,'' said Jim Thomas, an emeritus professor of sociology and criminology at Northern Illinois who taught Kazmierczak, promoted him to a teacher's aide and became his friend.

Kazmierczak once told Thomas about getting a discharge from the Army.

''It was no major deal, a kind of incompatibility discharge -- for a state of mind, not for any behavior,'' Thomas said. ''He was concerned that that on his record might be a stigma.''

Kazmierczak enlisted in September 2001, but was discharged in February 2002 for an unspecified reason, Army spokesman Paul Boyce said.

He worked from Sept. 24 to Oct. 9 as a corrections officer at the Rockville Correctional Facility, a medium-security prison in Rockville, Ind. His tenure there ended when ''he just didn't show up one day,'' Indiana prisons spokesman Doug Garrison said.

On Friday, investigators interviewed Kazmierczak's father in Lakeland, Fla., and his former girlfriend in Champaign, the Chicago Tribune reported. Investigators provided no details about what they may have learned.

Authorities were looking into whether Kazmierczak and the woman recently broke up, according to a law enforcement official who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because the case is still under investigation.

On Feb. 9, Kazmierczak walked into a Champaign gun store and picked up two guns -- a Remington shotgun and a Glock 9mm handgun. He bought the two other handguns at the same shop -- a Hi-Point .380 on Dec. 30 and a Sig Sauer on Aug. 6.

All four guns were bought legally from a federally licensed firearms dealer, said Thomas Ahern, a spokesman for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. At least one criminal background check was performed -- Kazmierczak had no criminal record.

Kazmierczak had a State Police-issued FOID, or firearms owners identification card, which is required in Illinois to own a gun, authorities said. Such cards are rarely issued to those with recent mental health problems.

NIU President John Peters said Kazmierczak compiled ''a very good academic record, no record of trouble'' at the 25,000-student campus in DeKalb. He won at least two awards and served as an officer in two student groups dedicated to promoting understanding of the criminal justice system.

Kazmierczak (pronounced kaz-MUR-chek) grew up in the Chicago suburb of Elk Grove Village. He was a B student at Elk Grove High School, where school district spokeswoman Venetia Miles said he was active in band and took Japanese before graduating in 1998. He was also in the chess club.

No one answered the door Saturday morning at the Urbana home of Kazmierczak's sister, Susan. But sobs could be heard through the door, where a posted statement said:

''We are both shocked and saddened. In addition to the loss of innocent lives, Steven was a member of our family. We are grieving his loss as well as the loss of life resulting from his actions.''

At NIU, six white crosses were placed on a snow-covered hill around the center of campus, which was closed Friday. They included the names of four victims -- Daniel Parmenter, Ryanne Mace, Julianna Gehant, Catalina Garcia. The two other crosses were blank, though officials have identified Kazmierczak's final victim as Gayle Dubowski.

By Friday night, dozens of candles flickered in packed snow at makeshift memorials around campus as hundreds of students, mostly wearing the school colors of red and black, packed a memorial service.

''It's kind of overwhelming. It feels strong, it feels like we're all in this together,'' said Carlee Siggeman, 18, a freshman from Genoa who attended the vigil with friends.

------

Associated Press writers Don Babwin, Deanna Bellandi, Dave Carpenter, Tamara Starks, Carla K. Johnson, Lindsey Tanner, David Mercer, Nguyen Huy Vu, Michael Tarm and Mike Robinson in Chicago, Anthony McCartney in Lakeland, Fla., and Matt Apuzzo and Lolita Baldor in Washington contributed to this report, along with the AP News Research Center in New York.

    Gunman's Friendly Exterior Masked Past, NYT, 16.2.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-NIU-Shooting.html

Illinois Gunman Showed Few Hints of Trouble

February 16, 2008
The New York Times
By MONICA DAVEY

DeKALB, Ill. — Steve Kazmierczak, the man who walked silently into a classroom here on Thursday and opened fire, was not seen as struggling in college. He was not an outcast. And until recently, at least, he was not brooding.

In a stark, puzzling contrast to the usual image of a rampaging gunman, Mr. Kazmierczak, 27, was described Friday as a successful student — “revered,” the authorities said, by his professors — who had served as a teaching assistant and received a dean’s award as an undergraduate here at Northern Illinois University, where he returned Thursday, killing himself and five students and wounding 16 others.

Here, he had campaigned for a leadership post in a student group that studied the failings of the prison system, an issue he was passionately concerned about, and had apparently won. He was a co-author of an academic paper called “Self-Injury in Correctional Settings: ‘Pathology’ of Prisons or of Prisoners?” which examined why inmates might hurt themselves with behaviors like cutting their skin.

He was personable, easy to talk to, an excellent student, said his professors at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, some 130 miles south of here, where he was on his way to receiving a master’s degree in social work. The specialty he selected was in mental health.

“In this case, I was overwhelmed,” said Jan Carter-Black, Mr. Kazmierczak’s adviser and an assistant professor in the School of Social Work at the University of Illinois, after learning that Mr. Kazmierczak was the gunman. “I was amazed. I was shocked. I was overwhelmed.”

Officials said the only hint of trouble from Mr. Kazmierczak, who fatally shot himself moments after firing at a large class with rounds from some of his four guns, had come in the last few weeks.

Family members told the authorities that Mr. Kazmierczak had stopped taking his medication. Law enforcement authorities would not say what the medication was for, but said Mr. Kazmierczak had grown erratic, according to his family, in the days after he quit taking the drugs.

The gunman bought his weapons legally from a Champaign gun dealer, officials said. He also bought some accessories from the popular Internet dealer who sold a gun to the gunman in the Virginia Tech massacre last year.

In Champaign, neighbors at a modest apartment complex Mr. Kazmierczak had moved into not long ago said they, too, had sensed that something was not quite right. The look on his face suggested he had “a lot on his mind,” said Martha Shinall, 78, who lives across the hall from Mr. Kazmierczak’s apartment, where he sometimes blared his music and spent time with a girlfriend.

But beyond the recent changes and some glimpses of inconsistency through the years — a quick end to a stint in the military, a prison job he left with no explanation — the authorities here said they knew nothing of signs, overlooked warnings, or known grudges when it came to Mr. Kazmierczak. He said nothing when he burst into an ocean sciences lecture in Cole Hall here on Thursday afternoon and started firing.

He left no known notes behind, said Donald Grady, the police chief at the university. He had no known relationships with any students or teachers inside the class. He had no previous run-ins with the police.

“He was an outstanding student, revered by faculty and staff,” said Chief Grady, acknowledging how that increased the mystery of the violence.

Mr. Kazmierczak grew up on a tree-lined street of ranch-style homes in the suburbs of Chicago with a sister and parents who retired to Lakeland, Fla., in recent years, records show. His mother, Gail, died in 2006, at age 58.

In a modest golf and country club community in Lakeland, at the home of his father, Robert Kazmierczak, plastic pink flamingos adorned the lawn and a sign, “Illini fans live here,” a reference to his son’s most recent university, hung on the front door.

“Please leave me alone,” the elder Mr. Kazmierczak told reporters from his front stoop in a brief, televised interview. “This is a very hard time. I’m a diabetic, and I don’t want to have a relapse,” he added, bursting into tears.

In Champaign, at the home of his sister, Susan, a message was taped to the door offering prayers and sympathies to all of the victims.

“We are both shocked and saddened,” the note said. “In addition to the loss of innocent lives, Steven was a member of our family. We are grieving his loss as well as the loss of life resulting from his actions.”

At Elk Grove High School, from which Mr. Kazmierczak graduated in 1998, he was a B student with a baby face who was active in chess club, “Peer Helpers,” a Japanese language program, a public service program and the school band, school officials and his yearbooks showed. In his 1996 yearbook, Mr. Kazmierczak offered his take on being in the band this way: “Fine arts was a way to escape reality, and at the same time they gave you new goals to reach.”

As an undergraduate and then a graduate student at Northern Illinois, Mr. Kazmierczak began focusing on sociology, a field that led him to his particular interest in prisons, prisoners and their re-entry into society.

“He was an exemplary student and a nice guy,” said Kristen Myers, one of his professors when Mr. Kazmierczak was in college here. “Something dreadful must have happened to him.”

In 2006, he won a dean’s award for his work at an annual awards ceremony. He became a leader in the university’s Academic Criminal Justice Association chapter, a group that saw its mission as helping the community understand the criminal justice system, especially corrections and juvenile justice, according to its Web site.

“I feel that I’m committed to social justice, and if elected as treasurer I promise to serve the NIU chapter,” he wrote, “to the best of my ability.”

In describing himself on a paper he had helped write, he told of his “interests in corrections, political violence, and peace and social justice” and said he was also working on a manuscript on “the role of religion in the formation of early prisons in the United States” with two others.

By the summer of 2007, he had left DeKalb for Champaign, where he was seeking a master’s in social work, said Dr. Carter-Black, his adviser at the University of Illinois. There, she said, he was well-prepared and respectful, and showed no signs of any troubling pattern.

Last fall, he dropped out of Dr. Carter-Black’s class, “Human Behavior and the Social Environment,” because he said he had gotten a job at a prison — an area in which she knew he was deeply interested.

He also served as a research assistant for Chris Larrison, an assistant professor in the School of Social Work, who said he saw him as an appealing, personable student and a hard worker.

“He really had a very compassionate outlook about prisoners coming back into society and getting a fair shake,” Professor Larrison said. “He really wanted to be part of that process in a very idealistic way.”

Although the authorities and professors painted a glowing outward portrait of Mr. Kazmierczak, a few indications emerged of inconsistencies in his life.

He enlisted in the Army in September 2001, a Department of Defense spokeswoman said, and was “administratively discharged” in February 2002. The spokeswoman, Lt. Col. Anne Edgecomb, said that under privacy laws, the Army would not describe the circumstances of the discharge, but that such discharges were commonly given because of a recruit’s failure to complete training or discovery of a medical condition that was not evident at the time of enlistment.

And while Mr. Kazmierczak was hired last September as an officer at the Rockville Correctional Facility in Indiana, he barely lasted two weeks there, and failed to complete training, said Randy Koester, chief of staff for the Indiana Department of Correction. His professors seemed unaware that he had left the job.

“He quit; he just didn’t show up,” Mr. Koester said. “He called in with an excuse about why he couldn’t come the last day, but he never called after that, and he never came back.”

Late Friday, the authorities here still were piecing together the hours leading up to Mr. Kazmierczak’s rampage in a search, in part, for some explanation of how someone seemingly so unlikely had committed such violence.

    Illinois Gunman Showed Few Hints of Trouble, NYT, 16.2.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/16/us/16gunman.html?hp

Grief and Questions After Deadly Shootings

February 16, 2008
The New York Times
By SUSAN SAULNY and JEFF BAILEY

DeKALB, Ill. — The day after five students were gunned down in an afternoon science class on the campus of Northern Illinois University here, survivors struggled to manage their grief as the authorities released more details about the shooting and the gunman.

The few students who remained on campus began to formally memorialize the dead, and a silence fell over the university, broken only by the hum of news trucks and the activity of scattered police officers.

A Roman Catholic chapel filled up at noon for a Mass and memorial for the victims, but the campus emptied out as the day wore on. “Just get things normal — that would be nice,” said Jenna Mueth, a junior from Mascoutah, Ill., walking across the largely deserted campus about 4 p.m. in flip-flops despite the 14-degree weather and deep snow.

Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich, who visited the campus on Friday, said: “In an institution devoted to learning, we saw yesterday an act of unthinkable horror. If there was a way to stop this attack before it happened, we will find it.”

In a grisly echo of another campus rampage last year, a Green Bay, Wis., gun dealer who sold a handgun to the Virginia Tech gunman, Seung-Hui Cho, said on his Web site, topglock .com, that his business also sold firearm accessories to the gunman in the Northern Illinois shootings, Steve P. Kazmierczak.

The dealer, Eric Thompson, said Mr. Kazmierczak ordered two Glock magazines and a holster for a Glock handgun on Feb. 4 and received them on Tuesday.

“Today’s discovery is doubly difficult for us,” Mr. Thompson said, “as we are still saddened by the Virginia Tech murders. As a father, my heart breaks for the parents who lost a son or daughter to the acts of these madmen.”

Mr. Kazmierczak’s arsenal included a Remington 12-gauge shotgun and a Glock 9 millimeter handgun bought legally last Saturday from a Champaign, Ill., gun dealer, and two other handguns that federal officials said had been bought earlier from the same store.

Kevin Cronin, an official of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said that as far as the agency knew as of Friday, Mr. Kazmierczak would not have been prohibited from buying any of the guns.

The authorities said Mr. Kazmierczak, 27, who graduated from Northern Illinois and had been a graduate student in sociology at the University of Illinois, had concealed the shotgun in a guitar case, and entered the lecture hall with three smaller handguns on a belt hidden under his overcoat.

As of Friday afternoon, it appeared that Mr. Kazmierczak had left no note, no indication of a motive, and had no known relationship with anyone in the science class, officials said.

Mr. Kazmierczak carried out his attack in a matter of seconds, the authorities said, even with stopping to reload his shotgun, ultimately shooting 16 students and the teacher, all between the ages of 18 and 32.

He began to fire at 3:06 p.m., and by the time 10 campus security officers arrived on the scene, within a minute and a half, he was done.

Doctors in the emergency room of the community hospital here said they saw injuries consistent with students being surprised by fire — shots to the head and torso — and with students trying to run away, with wounds on their backs.

Donald Grady, chief of the Northern Illinois University Police, said 48 casings and six shotgun shells were recovered at the scene. Meghan Murphy, 22, a junior psychology major, was in the classroom when Mr. Kazmierczak started shooting.

“It looked like a theatrical thing the way he walked onto the stage,” she said. “But then people were saying: ‘He’s got a gun! He’s got a gun!’ ”

Ms. Murphy said she saw bullets whir past her, and saw smoke. She tried to run for the exits, but was twice knocked down in a stampede.

“On the way out, people couldn’t believe what they had seen,” she said. “People were saying: ‘Did that really happen? Was he really shooting?’ ”

The authorities on Friday identified the dead as Daniel Parmenter, 20; Catalina Garcia, 20; Ryanne Mace, 19; Julianna Gehant, 32; and Gayle Dubowski, 20. All were from Illinois.

Mr. Parmenter sat in the front of the classroom, and was described by his Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity brothers as outgoing and athletic. He was sitting next to his girlfriend, who was also shot.

Ms. Garcia wanted to be a teacher. Ms. Mace had updated her MySpace.com page earlier in the day. It said, “Happy Valentine’s Day Everybody!”

Ms. Dubowski had recently worked as a counselor at a church camp. Ms. Gehant served 12 years in the Army Corps of Engineers as a carpenter, and her job included building schools overseas.

Chief Grady said that Mr. Kazmierczak had recently stopped taking some sort of medication and was said to have been acting erratically. The chief, however, offered no details on the medication, why it was being taken, or what the earlier disturbing behavior was.

Ms. Mueth said she was frightened and shocked by the events. She said she and her friends in the Neptune West dorm were planning to be together for support. “We’re planning to watch a movie tonight,” she said.

    Grief and Questions After Deadly Shootings, NYT, 16.2.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/16/us/16shooting.html

Obama Supports Individual Gun Rights

February 15, 2008
Filed at 1:07 p.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

MILWAUKEE (AP) -- Barack Obama said Friday that the country must do ''whatever it takes'' to eradicate gun violence following a campus shooting in his home state, but he believes in an individual's right to bear arms.

Obama said he spoke to Northern Illinois University's president Friday morning by phone and offered whatever help his Senate office could provide in the investigation and improving campus security. The Democratic presidential candidate spoke about the Illinois shooting to reporters while campaigning in neighboring Wisconsin.

The senator, a former constitutional law instructor, said some scholars argue the Second Amendment to the Constitution guarantees gun ownerships only to militias, but he believes it grants individual gun rights.

''I think there is an individual right to bear arms, but it's subject to commonsense regulation'' like background checks, he said during a news conference.

He said he would support federal legislation based on a California law that would facilitate immediate tracing of bullets used in a crime. He said even though the California law was passed over the strong objection of the National Rifle Association, he thinks it's the type of law that gun owners and crime victims can get behind.

Five people, including the shooter, were killed during Thursday's ambush inside a lecture hall. Authorities said the two guns used were purchased legally less then a week ago.

''Today we offer them our thoughts and prayers, but we also have to offer them our determination to do whatever it takes to eradicate this violence from our streets, from our schools, from our neighborhoods and our cities,'' Obama said. ''That is our duty as Americans.''

Although Obama supports gun control, while campaigning in gun-friendly Idaho earlier this month, he said he does not intend to take away people's guns.

At his news conference, he voiced support for the District of Columbia's ban on handguns, which is scheduled to be heard by the Supreme Court next month.

''The notion that somehow local jurisdictions can't initiate gun safety laws to deal with gang bangers and random shootings on the street isn't born out by our Constitution,'' Obama said.

Obama also:

-- Said Clinton now is attacking him for watering down a bill to regulate the nuclear industry that she also voted for and touted on her Web site. He suggested her attack was made out of desperation because his campaign is ahead.

''I understand that Senator Clinton, periodically when she's feeling down, launches attacks as a way of trying to boost her appeal,'' he said. ''But I think this kind of gamesmanship is not what the American people are looking for.''

-- Seemed to hedge on his statement last year that he would accept public funds if his Republican opponent did as well. Likely GOP nominee John McCain has said he would adhere to such an agreement, but Obama was not willing to make such a firm commitment.

''If I am the nominee, then I will make sure that our people talk to John McCain's people to find out if we're willing to abide by the same rules and regulations with respect to the general election going forward,'' Obama said. ''But it would be presumptuous of me to say now that I'm locking myself into something when I don't even know if the other side is going to agree to it and I'm not the nominee yet.''

-- Blamed problems with the economy on a ''failure of leadership in Washington'' that includes decisions by the Bush administration on taxes and the Clinton administration on trade. He criticized ''politicians (who) tout NAFTA as a success when they're in the White House and then call it a mistake when they're on the campaign trail.''

-- Said he has not considered whether he would give up his Senate seat if he wins the presidential nomination.

------

On the Net:

http://www.barackobama.com

    Obama Supports Individual Gun Rights, NYT, 15.2.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Obama.html

University Gunman Is Identified

February 15, 2008
The New York Times
By SUSAN SAULNY and MONICA DAVEY

DeKALB, Ill. — With minutes left in a class in ocean sciences at Northern Illinois University on Thursday afternoon, a tall skinny man dressed all in black stepped out from behind a curtain on the stage of the lecture hall, said nothing, and opened fire with a shotgun, the authorities and witnesses said.

The man shot again and again, witnesses said, perhaps 20 times or more. Students in the large lecture hall, stunned and screaming, dropped to the floor. They crouched behind anything they could find, even an overhead projector. They scattered, the blood of victims spattering, some said, on those who escaped injury.

On Friday morning, the coroners office of DeKalb County, Ill., added another person to the death toll, which now stands at six, all of them students. Fifteen others were wounded, at least one of them critically. Hospital officials said at least 13 males and five females between the ages of 18 and 27 had been shot, several of them in the head.

The gunman, whom the authorities did not identify pending family notification, also died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, said John G. Peters, the president of Northern Illinois University. The gunman, he said, had been a graduate student in sociology at the university in 2007, but was no longer enrolled here. Records suggested that the man, who had more recently attended a different state school, had no previous police contact, the authorities said.

President Bush commented on the shooting Friday morning, saying it was “obviously a tragic situation on that campus.” He said he was asking citizens across the country to “offer their blessings — blessings of comfort and blessings of strength” to the families of the victims.

The coroner’s office gave the names of four of the victims as Daniel Parmenter, 20; Catalina Garcia, 20; Ryanne Mace, 19; and Julianna Gehant, 32.

Kishwaukee Community Hospital, where most of the victims were taken after the shooting, said on Friday morning that only two of the 18 patients admitted remained there, and they were in good or fair condition.

A 22-year-old male died, and seven others in critical condition were flown to other hospitals, the hospital said. The hospital planned a news conference for 11 a.m. central time.

Police officers from the campus, which sits in a snow-covered community 65 miles due west of Chicago, said three weapons had been found with the man’s body: two handguns, including a Glock, and the shotgun. The man’s body was found on the lecture hall stage, the police said. He had ammunition left over.

In a televised interview Friday morning, Mr. Peters said that universities were among the most open institutions in society, but that there shooting here and the attack at Virginia Tech last year is “forcing us to reconsider how we do things.” He described the change as “unfortunate.”

He said Northern Illinois had revised its emergency response procedures, in the wake of the Virginia Tech attack, including how it communicates with students and faculty, and said “I believe it paid off.”

Kevin McEnery, 19, one of the public university’s more than 25,000 students, was seated in the third row of the class when the man stormed in and “just came out and started shooting.” Mr. McEnery dived for the floor, he said, and began crawling as far as he could from the gunman, trying to get near an exit. He found himself huddled beside a female student he did not know.

“I just thought if he gets up there, this is it — I’m about to die,” Mr. McEnery remembered thinking. “Because I knew if he shot long enough he would find us.”

When the gunman first burst in, Mr. McEnery said, the classroom turned loud and chaotic with some students shouting, “He has a gun!” and “Call 911!”

Then came an eerie silence, but for the bullets.

“Once he settled in and started shooting people, pretty much everyone was quiet,” he said.

In the moments after the shooting, university officials put into action a detailed security plan created for just such an incident, Mr. Peters said. Many universities and colleges around the country designed elaborate lock-down and notification plans in the days and weeks after a student at Virginia Tech, in Blacksburg, killed 32 people in the worst shooting rampage in modern American history.

“This is a tragedy,” Mr. Peters said. “But from all indications we did everything we could when we found out.”

Shots rang out inside Cole Hall shortly after 3 p.m., Mr. Peters said. The campus police arrived within two minutes, the police said. At 3:07 p.m., the campus was ordered into a lockdown, Mr. Peters said. At 3:20 p.m., he said, the university posted an alert on its Web site, through its e-mail system and through another campus alarm system: “There has been a report of a possible gunman on campus. Get to a safe area and take precautions until given the all clear. Avoid the King Commons and all buildings in that vicinity.”

By 4 p.m., Mr. Peters said, the police had determined that there had been only one gunman, now dead, and issued another message to students at 4:14 p.m.: “Campus police report that the immediate danger has passed. The gunman is no longer a threat.”

The class in Cole Hall had been an introductory offering, and most of the 162 students registered for the course were probably freshmen or sophomores, said Jonathan Berg, chairman of the department of geology and environmental geosciences.

The authorities here canceled classes for the rest of the evening and Friday. Counselors had been called in, they said, and counseling was already being offered in every residence hall by Thursday evening, they said.

Leaders at the school said the events in Virginia a year ago had shaken many but also led to a focus on security and the possibility of such an incident.

“Since Virginia Tech, people have had time to think about how to respond to these things, so it’s fresh on everybody’s mind,” said Mr. Berg. “And they’re trying to do everything they’ve been talking about for the last few months.”

Students here heard of threats at the school late last year, a fact that left some wondering whether there might be some connection to what had happened on Thursday.

Last December, university officials canceled classes for a day during final exams after someone scrawled threats in a dormitory bathroom, including a reference to the Virginia Tech massacre and a racial slur. The police here said Thursday they had no reason to suspect a connection.

Northern Illinois University, chartered in 1895, draws 91 percent of its students from inside the state of Illinois.

In Springfield, Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich declared a state of emergency after the shootings, offering state relief for expenses and the state emergency management agency to help.

Outside the dormitories on Thursday evening, it looked like the last day of school. Students streamed out of dorms carrying backpacks and luggage. A caravan of parents made its way onto campus to meet them, and many waited for their children in idling cars.

Just off campus, along the school’s Greek Row, fraternity brothers were gathering at Pi Kappa Alpha to mourn. One of the dead, they said, was a 19-year-old sophomore majoring in finance and a fraternity brother.

“Right now everyone is very quiet, shocked, crying,” said Jason Garcia, 21 and the president of the fraternity. “Even us frat boys can get emotional, break down.” Inside, students were hugging, talking quietly. Two counselors offered help.

Outside her dormitory Thursday night, Michelle LeBlanc, 19, a sophomore, said she was supposed to be in Cole Hall when the shooting happened but had been late for class. A friend, though, had been inside, she said, and had sat beside a student who was shot in the head.

“She had to hold his head until help came,” Ms. LeBlanc said. “She’s so upset.”

Mr. McEnery, the student who had crawled as far as he could from the gunman on Thursday afternoon, said he had fled the building only after the bullets stopped pounding. The room was silent. He looked up, saw another student looking around, and raced out.

“I just can’t stop thinking about everyone,” Mr. McEnery said of the students who died. “It’s going to be tough going back.”
 

Susan Saulny reported from DeKalb, and Monica Davey from Racine, Wis. Dirk Johnson contributed reporting from DeKalb, Catrin Einhorn from Chicago, and Graham Bowley and Mike Nizza from New York.

    University Gunman Is Identified, NYT, 15.2.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/15/us/15cnd-shoot.html?hp

Gunman Slays Five in Illinois at a University

February 15, 2008
The New York Times
By SUSAN SAULNY and MONICA DAVEY

DeKALB, Ill. — With minutes left in a class in ocean sciences at Northern Illinois University on Thursday afternoon, a tall skinny man dressed all in black stepped out from behind a curtain on the stage of the lecture hall, said nothing, and opened fire with a shotgun, the authorities and witnesses said.

The man shot again and again, witnesses said, perhaps 20 times or more. Students in the large lecture hall, stunned and screaming, dropped to the floor. They crouched behind anything they could find, even an overhead projector. They scattered, the blood of victims spattering, some said, on those who escaped injury.

Five people, all of them students, were killed, John G. Peters, the president of Northern Illinois University, said at a news conference late Thursday evening. Sixteen others were wounded, two of them critically, Mr. Peters said. Hospital officials said several of the students had been shot in the head.

The gunman, whom the authorities did not identify, also died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, Mr. Peters said. The gunman, he said, had been a graduate student in sociology at the university in 2007, but was no longer enrolled here. Records suggested that the man, who had more recently attended a different state school, had no previous police contact, the authorities said.

Police officers from the campus, which sits in a snow-covered community 65 miles due west of Chicago, said three weapons had been found with the man’s body: two handguns, including a Glock, and the shotgun. The man’s body was found on the lecture hall stage, the police said. He had ammunition left over.

Kevin McEnery, 19, one of the public university’s more than 25,000 students, was seated in the third row of the class when the man stormed in and “just came out and started shooting.” Mr. McEnery dived for the floor, he said, and began crawling as far as he could from the gunman, trying to get near an exit. He found himself huddled beside a female student he did not know.

“I just thought if he gets up there, this is it — I’m about to die,” Mr. McEnery remembered thinking. “Because I knew if he shot long enough he would find us.”

When the gunman first burst in, Mr. McEnery said, the classroom turned loud and chaotic with some students shouting, “He has a gun!” and “Call 911!”

Then came an eerie silence, but for the bullets.

“Once he settled in and started shooting people, pretty much everyone was quiet,” he said.

In the moments after the shooting, university officials put into action a detailed security plan created for just such an incident, Mr. Peters said. Many universities and colleges around the country designed elaborate lock-down and notification plans in the days and weeks after a student at Virginia Tech, in Blacksburg, killed 32 people in the worst shooting rampage in modern American history.

“This is a tragedy,” Mr. Peters said. “But from all indications we did everything we could when we found out.”

Shots rang out inside Cole Hall shortly after 3 p.m., Mr. Peters said. The campus police arrived within two minutes, the police said. At 3:07 p.m., the campus was ordered into a lockdown, Mr. Peters said. At 3:20 p.m., he said, the university posted an alert on its Web site, through its e-mail system and through another campus alarm system: “There has been a report of a possible gunman on campus. Get to a safe area and take precautions until given the all clear. Avoid the King Commons and all buildings in that vicinity.”

By 4 p.m., Mr. Peters said, the police had determined that there had been only one gunman, now dead, and issued another message to students at 4:14 p.m.: “Campus police report that the immediate danger has passed. The gunman is no longer a threat.”

The class in Cole Hall had been an introductory offering, and most of the 162 students registered for the course were probably freshmen or sophomores, said Jonathan Berg, chairman of the department of geology and environmental geosciences.

The authorities here canceled classes for the rest of the evening and Friday. Counselors had been called in, they said, and counseling was already being offered in every residence hall by Thursday evening, they said.

Leaders at the school said the events in Virginia a year ago had shaken many but also led to a focus on security and the possibility of such an incident.

“Since Virginia Tech, people have had time to think about how to respond to these things, so it’s fresh on everybody’s mind,” said Mr. Berg. “And they’re trying to do everything they’ve been talking about for the last few months.”

Students here heard of threats at the school late last year, a fact that left some wondering whether there might be some connection to what had happened on Thursday.

Last December, university officials canceled classes for a day during final exams after someone scrawled threats in a dormitory bathroom, including a reference to the Virginia Tech massacre and a racial slur. The police here said Thursday they had no reason to suspect a connection.

Northern Illinois University, chartered in 1895, draws 91 percent of its students from inside the state of Illinois.

In Springfield, Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich declared a state of emergency after the shootings, offering state relief for expenses and the state emergency management agency to help.

Outside the dormitories on Thursday evening, it looked like the last day of school. Students streamed out of dorms carrying backpacks and luggage. A caravan of parents made its way onto campus to meet them, and many waited for their children in idling cars.

Just off campus, along the school’s Greek Row, fraternity brothers were gathering at Pi Kappa Alpha to mourn. One of the dead, they said, was a 19-year-old sophomore majoring in finance and a fraternity brother.

“Right now everyone is very quiet, shocked, crying,” said Jason Garcia, 21 and the president of the fraternity. “Even us frat boys can get emotional, break down.” Inside, students were hugging, talking quietly. Two counselors offered help.

Outside her dormitory Thursday night, Michelle LeBlanc, 19, a sophomore, said she was supposed to be in Cole Hall when the shooting happened but had been late for class. A friend, though, had been inside, she said, and had sat beside a student who was shot in the head.

“She had to hold his head until help came,” Ms. LeBlanc said. “She’s so upset.”

Mr. McEnery, the student who had crawled as far as he could from the gunman on Thursday afternoon, said he had fled the building only after the bullets stopped pounding. The room was silent. He looked up, saw another student looking around, and raced out.

“I just can’t stop thinking about everyone,” Mr. McEnery said of the students who died. “It’s going to be tough going back.”
 

Susan Saulny reported from DeKalb, and Monica Davey from Racine, Wis. Dirk Johnson contributed reporting from DeKalb, and Catrin Einhorn from Chicago.

    Gunman Slays Five in Illinois at a University, NYT, 15.2.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/15/us/15shoot.html?hp

Woman Kills 2 at La. College

February 8, 2008
Filed at 1:47 p.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) -- A young woman killed two female students in a college classroom at a vocational college Friday, then killed herself, police said.

The students apparently were shot in their seats in the second-floor classroom at Louisiana Technical College, Sgt. Don Kelly said.

Officers ran into the building within four minutes of the first 911 call, which came at 8:36 a.m., he said.

''There was mass pandemonium, people running,'' Kelly said. ''One officer -- the first into the classroom -- told me he could still smell gunpowder.''

The students' names and ages were not immediately released, and it was not clear whether the shooter also was a student.

The school offers classes in a dozen subjects including early childhood education, practical nursing, drafting and welding.

Students had to stay in their classrooms for about two hours before being released for the day, said Louis Davis. He said he was taking a test for an automobile technology class when a teacher ''said to stay in the classroom because there's been an incident.'' Davis said

He said they were allowed to leave after a police officer asked them brief questions.

School administrators and campus police did not return calls or e-mails.

------

Associated Press Writer Janet McConnaughey in New Orleans contributed to this story.

    Woman Kills 2 at La. College, NYT, 8.2.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Campus-Shooting.html

6 killed at Mo. council meeting; gunman left note, brother says

7 February 2008
USA Today

KIRKWOOD, Mo. (AP) — A gunman carrying a grudge against City Hall left a suicide note on his bed warning "The truth will come out in the end," before he went on a deadly shooting spree at a council meeting, his brother told the Associated Press on Friday.

Arthur Thornton, 42, said in an interview at the family's home he knew when he read the one-line note that Charles Lee "Cookie" Thornton was the man who stormed the meeting Thursday night and killed five people before police shot him dead.

"It looks like my brother is going crazy, but he's just trying to get people's attention," Thornton said. The note, which police now have, reflected his brother's growing frustration with local leaders, he said.

Friends and relatives said the dead gunman had a long-standing feud with the city, and he had lost a federal free-speech lawsuit against the St. Louis suburb just 10 days earlier. At earlier meetings, he said he had received 150 tickets against his business.

The victims were identified Friday as Public Works Director Kenneth Yost, Officer Tom Ballman, Officer William Biggs and council members Michael H.T. Lynch and Connie Karr. Flowers and balloons were placed outside City Hall Friday in their honor.

The city's mayor, Mike Swoboda, was in critical condition at an intensive care unit, St. John's Mercy Medical Center spokeswoman Lynne Beck said. Another victim, Suburban Journals newspaper reporter Todd Smith, was in satisfactory condition, Beck said.

"This is such an incredible shock to all of us. It's a tragedy of untold magnitude," Tim Griffin, Kirkwood's deputy mayor, said at a news conference. "The business of the city will continue and we will recover but we will never be the same."

The meeting had just started when the shooter opened fire, said Janet McNichols, a reporter covering the meeting for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

The gunman killed one officer outside City Hall, then walked into the council chambers, shot another and continued pulling the trigger, St. Louis County Police spokeswoman Tracy Panus said Friday. A witness said the gunman yelled "Shoot the mayor!" as he fired shots in the chambers.

Police said he first fired with a handgun he brought, then used one of the slain officer's pistols to continue the rampage.

As the man fired at City Attorney John Hessel, Hessel tried to fight off the attacker by throwing chairs, McNichols said. The shooter then moved behind the desk where the council sits and fired more shots at council members.

"We crawled under the chairs and just laid there," McNichols told ABC's Good Morning America. "We heard Cookie shooting, and then we heard some shouting, and the police, the Kirkwood police had heard what was going on, and they ran in, and they shot him."

Thornton was often a contentious presence at the council's meetings; he had twice been convicted of disorderly conduct for disrupting meetings in May 2006.

The city had ticketed Thornton's demolition and asphalt business, Cookco Construction, for parking his commercial vehicles in the neighborhood, said Ron Hodges, a friend who lives in the community. The tickets were "eating at him," Hodges said.

"He felt that as a black contractor he was being singled out," said Hodges, who is black. "I guess he thought mentally he had no more recourse. That's not an excuse."

Franklin McCallie, a longtime friend of Thornton's, said Thornton once told him that the city would drop the fines, which totaled in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, if he "would just follow the law."

"In our long talks, I begged him to do this," McCallie said in an e-mail to the AP on Friday. "But Cookie said it was a matter of principle with him and that he wanted to sue the city for millions of dollars."

McCallie called Thornton's deadly rampage "a brutal and inexcusable act, the act of a person who was not in his right mind when he did it."

The weekly Webster-Kirkwood Times quoted Swoboda as saying in June 2006 that Thornton's contentious remarks over the years created "one of the most embarrassing situations that I have experienced in my many years of public service."

The mayor's comments came during a meeting attended by Thornton two weeks after he was forcibly removed from the chambers. Swoboda had said the council considered banning Thornton from future meetings but decided against it.

In a federal lawsuit stemming from his arrests during two meetings just weeks apart, Thornton insisted that Kirkwood officials violated his constitutional rights to free speech by barring him from speaking at the meetings.

But a judge in St. Louis tossed out the lawsuit Jan. 28, writing that "any restrictions on Thornton's speech were reasonable, viewpoint neutral, and served important governmental interests."

Another brother, Gerald Thornton, said the legal setback may have been his brother's final straw. "He has (spoken) on it as best he could in the courts, and they denied all rights to the access of protection and he took it upon himself to go to war and end the issue," he said.

In a neighborhood of modest, ranch-style homes, the gunman's house appears neatly landscaped with colorful mulch, the property's circle driveway lined by well-placed shrubs.

Outside the house, a tattered U.S. flag flew at half-staff, not far from a handwritten sign that read: "RIP Cookie. Only God can judge you!!!!!"

Kirkwood is about 20 miles southwest of downtown St. Louis. City Hall is in a quiet area filled with condominiums, eateries and shops, not far from a dance studio and train station. Despite its reputation locally for serenity, the city has grappled in recent years with crimes that brought it unwanted attention.

Down the street from City Hall is the Imo's pizzeria once managed by Michael Devlin, who kidnapped 11-year-old Shawn Hornbeck in 2002 and held him for four years before authorities rescued him in January 2007. Also rescued was Ben Ownby, another teenager Devlin abducted just days before Devlin's arrest.

Those crimes got Devlin life terms on state charges, as well as 170 years behind bars on federal charges that he made pornography.

    6 killed at Mo. council meeting; gunman left note, brother says, UT, 7.2.2008, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-02-07-council-shootings_N.htm

Missouri Shooter’s Motives Emerge

February 8, 2008
The New York Times
By MIKE NIZZA and MONICA DAVEY

Charles Lee Thornton used two weapons in a deadly shooting rampage at a City Council meeting in a St. Louis suburb Thursday night, police said, disclosing new details about the attack at a news conference Friday morning.

The first of the five people killed, a police officer outside the building, was shot with a large-caliber revolver and then stripped of his weapon, said Tracy Panus, spokeswoman for the St. Louis County Police Department.

The suspect then proceeded to the council chamber armed with both guns.

Kirkwood, Missouri, was in mourning Friday, with flags flying at half staff at schools and prayer services and vigils planned throughout the day.

Mr. Thornton was shot and killed by police after the five people were killed at the start of a council session in Kirkwood. Two others were wounded, including Mayor Mike Swoboda, who was in critical condition Friday and going into surgery.

Outside Kirkwood’s police department, lilies, roses, daisies and an American flag were laid in remembrance of the two officers killed last night.

“There’s an old saying that you never get more than you can handle,” Police Chief Jack Plummer said. “We’re being tested.”

As the county mourned, the suspect’s brother, Gerald Thornton, defended the assault during several interviews.

“My brother went to war tonight with the government,” Gerald Thornton said in an interview with a local television station after the incident. “He decided that he could no longer verbally work it out.”

In another interview, he emphasized “that this was not a random rampage.”

On CNN, Mr. Thornton seemed to confirm reports that ticketing of his brother’s commercial vehicles were at the core of the dispute. Violations of his “constitutional protections” was also cited, without elaboration.

The brother said that he had no advanced warning of the shooting, and he did not know that his brother owned a revolver. A suicide note was left behind, he said.

The violence began about 7 p.m., when the man approached a Kirkwood police officer in a parking lot near the police station and shot and killed the officer, Ms. Panus said late Thursday.

Moments later, the man appeared inside City Hall, a short walk from the Police Department, shot and killed another police officer and then fatally shot three city officials who were inside the council meeting, officials said. Two others at the meeting were also shot and wounded, one critically, Ms. Panus said.

Witnesses told of chaotic scene in Kirkwood, a middle class community of about 27,000 people with a main street lined with shops and restaurants and many grand homes. As officers from departments from suburbs throughout the region swarmed into Kirkwood, many residents expressed disbelief and anger that such a thing could happen in there.

According to The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which had a correspondent at the meeting, the Pledge of Allegiance had just been recited and Mayor Mike Swoboda was starting the meeting when the gunman rushed inside the council chambers and opened fire with at least one weapon. Mr. Swoboda was injured.

Some witnesses said they had heard at least 15 gunshots, maybe more. About 30 people were believed to be at the meeting. Some tried to fight off the gunman by throwing chairs

Charles Lee Thornton, an independent contractor known as Cookie, was said to have often come to council meetings and to have had repeated disagreements with Kirkwood officials.

“He came from the back of the room,” Janet McNichols, the correspondent, told The Post-Dispatch. “He kept saying something about, ‘Shoot the mayor,’ and he just walked around shooting anybody he could.”

On the newspaper’s Web site, Ms. McNichols said she had looked up to see a police officer shot in the head, then saw the gunman shooting at a public works official. “After that, I was on my stomach under the chairs,” she said. “I laid on my stomach waiting to get shot. Oh, God, it was a horror.”

Susan Saulny. Malcolm Gay and Carla Baranauckas contributed reporting.

    Missouri Shooter’s Motives Emerge, NYT, 8.2.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/08/us/08cnd-missouri.html?hp

Officer Killed in Armed Standoff

February 7, 2008
The New York Times
By JOHN HOLUSHA

A tense armed standoff at a house in northwestern Los Angeles ended Thursday morning with the death of a man in an exchange of gunfire with police, as the house burned in a smoky fire.

At the start of the standoff late Wednesday night, two members of the Los Angeles Police Department’s SWAT squad were shot, one of them fatally. It was the first time in the 41-year history of the unit that a SWAT officer died in the line of duty, police said. The other wounded officer is expected to survive, they said.

Three other people were killed in the incident, apparently by the gunman; they may have been relatives of his.

After surrounding the house all night with about 200 officers, the police began taking action to end the standoff as the sun began to rise around 6 a.m. Pacific time. Armored vehicles with battering rams punched holes in the exterior walls, and tear-gas containers were tossed inside the house, which subsequently caught fire; the tear-gas containers are thought to have touched off the fire.

The police said the incident began when a man called them at about 9 p.m. on Wednesday to report that he had killed three people. SWAT officers, who receive special training and equipment for dangerous and violent incidents, entered the house shortly after midnight, and found two dead bodies and a wounded man who was still alive. Speaking at a televised news conference, a police official said the wounded man was removed from the house and turned over to an emergency squad for treatment, but that he soon died.

Meanwhile, the police said, a gun battle broke out inside the house, and the two SWAT officers had to be rescued after being injured. Both were taken to a nearby hospital, where one died and the other spent much of the night in surgery.

The dead officer was identified by the Associated Press as Randal Simmons, 51, who left a wife and two children. The wounded man was listed as James Veemstra, 51, whose wife is also a police officer.

Both had been with the elite SWAT unit for more than 20 years, according to Jim McDonnell, an assistant chief of police.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigossa, appearing at late-night news conference, said of the officer’s death, “This is a very horrible tragedy, and our hearts go out to all the members of the L.A.P.D. who are also grieving at this time.”

The police said that after they began trying to inject tear gas into the house as a way to break the stalemate, a woman appeared at a door; she was removed from the scene unharmed. They said she appeared to have been present all night.

The shooter, who had not been publicly identified as of mid-morning, was said by police to have resisted all attempts to negotiate a peaceful end to the standoff, including appeals by relatives.

They said he kept moving around the house, trying to remain concealed; ultimately, he went down in an exchange of gunfire with officers, the police said.

Fire crews were brought in to contain the blaze and prevent it from spreading to nearby homes, many of which had been evacuated after the policemen were shot.

Firefighters were seen walking on the roof of the burning house at about 8 a.m. local time, an indication that by then the danger of gunfire had passed.

    Officer Killed in Armed Standoff, NYT, 7.2.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/07/us/07cnd-shoot.html

Kids Who Kill Offer Little Warning

February 6, 2008
Filed at 6:43 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

COCKEYSVILLE, Md. (AP) -- Authorities offered no further insight into the motive of a teenager accused in the shooting deaths of his father, mother and two brothers, but experts say such crimes are not unprecedented -- and they often come without any obvious warning signs.

Nicholas W. Browning remained jailed without bond after confessing early Sunday that he killed his father, John Browning, his mother, Tamara, and his younger brothers, Gregory, 14, and Benjamin, 11, according to Baltimore County police.

Browning, who turns 16 on Saturday, had no history of violence, mental health problems or drug problems, according to court documents. His father was a highly regarded business attorney, and the family lived in an affluent suburb. Browning played golf and lacrosse, was active in his church and was close to becoming an Eagle Scout.

Those details were not surprising to Paul A. Mones, a defense attorney for children accused of killing their parents, who wrote a book about his work called ''When a Child Kills.''

''This happens to kids in middle- and upper-middle-class, even upper-class homes,'' said Mones, who practices in Portland, Ore. ''It happens in families that, from the outside, look like normal, typical, great families.''

In the United States, about 300 children a year are charged with killing one or both parents, Mones said. Cases where a child kills the entire family, known as ''familicide,'' are less frequent.

Louis B. Schlesinger, a professor of a forensic psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, said familicide is more commonly committed by a depressed or jealous father.

Slayings of relatives by teenagers ''are usually spontaneous sorts of things,'' Schlesinger said. ''With the brooding, depressive male adult, it's not spontaneous, it's much more thought through, with obsessive rumination prior to it. With a teenager, it's almost always impulsive, spontaneous, and there happens to be a loaded gun around.''

Mones said slayings are typically motivated by one of two factors: ''extreme family dysfunction in terms of physical and emotional abuse, or severe mental health issues that pervade the family, whether it's the perpetrator or the parents or themselves.

''There are cases where kids just snap out of the blue and go on a rampage, but it's really, really rare.''

Bill Toohey, a police spokesman, said Browning told officers where they could find the gun used in the slayings, which he tossed into some bushes near the home. The gun belonged to John Browning and was kept inside the home.

Experts said easy access to guns was a common thread in cases where children kill their parents.

''The biggest risk factor that was not prevented was his access to firearms, and I think that's the biggest tragedy,'' said Dr. Anandhi Narasimhan, a Los Angeles-based child psychologist.

Narasimhan noted that because mental health records are confidential, it's impossible to know for sure whether Browning was suffering from mental illness or had shown other warning signs, such as bullying at school or cruelty to animals.

Mones hypothesizes that such slayings are more frequent in affluent families because wealth makes abuse easier to conceal.

''If you look at reports of abuse and family problems in upper-middle class families, it's really low, because the walls between the families and the world are very, very high,'' he said. ''In lower-income communities, the police and social service agencies have a major presence, so it's nothing to call 911 when a kid's being mistreated or a neighbor hears screams.''

    Kids Who Kill Offer Little Warning, NYT, 6.2.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Family-Killed.html

Md. Boy, 15, Charged With Killing Family

February 3, 2008
Filed at 11:53 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

COCKEYSVILLE, Md. (AP) -- A 15-year-old boy was charged with murder Sunday in the shooting deaths of his parents and two younger brothers in their home in a Baltimore suburb.

Nicholas Waggoner Browning was charged with four counts of first-degree murder in the slayings of his father, John Browning, 45; his mother Tamara, 44; and his brothers Gregory, 13, and Benjamin, 11. He was charged as an adult.

Browning was arrested at 1:05 a.m. Sunday after he admitted to the killings, Baltimore County Police spokesman Bill Toohey said.

The teen had a disagreement with his father and used his father's handgun to kill his family Friday night, Toohey said. After the slayings he threw the gun away in bushes near his house.

Browning then spent Friday night and all day Saturday with friends, Toohey said. When the friends took him back to his house at 5 p.m. Saturday, Browning went into the house and came back out to say that his father was dead.

Browning was denied bail Sunday morning; bail review will be conducted Monday. He was being held at the Baltimore County Detention Center in a special section for juveniles.

The grounds of the two-story home were neat and neighbor Mike Thomas said the Brownings would even pick up trash along the street.

''These people would do anything in the world for you -- just incredible people,'' Thomas said.

Neighbors called each other throughout the night to discuss the killings, Thomas said.

He said one of his sons had been in Boy Scouts with one of the Brownings' sons and was devastated when he learned of the deaths. Thomas said he recently sold Browning a trailer that Browning planned to use for Boy Scout outings, and it was still parked in the Brownings' driveway Sunday.

    Md. Boy, 15, Charged With Killing Family, NYT, 3.2.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Four-Dead.html

Hunt on for Man Who Shot 5 at Ill. Store

February 3, 2008
Filed at 11:49 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

TINLEY PARK, Ill. (AP) -- Police searched Sunday for a gunman who herded five women into the back room of a strip mall clothing store, killed them during a botched robbery and vanished after walking out of the shop's front door.

Officers swept through neighboring strip mall shops, aisle by aisle and with guns drawn, shortly after the shootings Saturday, but found no trace of the gunman.

Attempts to find him Saturday with dogs and a helicopter equipped with infrared sensors also failed, authorities said.

At the Brookside Marketplace on Sunday, police tape flapped in the wind in front of the boarded-up Lane Bryant store where the shootings occurred. Mourners brought flowers as shoppers returned to the mall and tried to make sense Sunday of the brutal killings.

A tear rolled down Cindy Sorenson's cheek as she brought a bouquet of bright red roses to the Lane Bryant store Sunday morning.

Sorenson, who works as a store manager at a nearby mall, said she didn't know the victims but couldn't stop thinking about the women who died.

''Your job is your home,'' the 34-year-old Tinley Park resident said. ''You spend so much time in a store and you never think anything like this will happen.''

Officers found the victims, including at least one employee, at the back of the Lane Bryant store after receiving a 911 call around 10:45 a.m, police said. Chief Mike O'Connell said a bystander told officers he had seen a stocky black man, about 5 feet 9 inches tall, who was wearing a black winter coat, a knit cap and dark pants, leave the store.

Authorities said robbery was believed to be the motive. The store did not have its own security camera, O'Connell said, but investigators were trying to determine if there was video from cameras mounted at nearby stores.

''We do not want to compromise any evidence that may be out there ... I ask we keep family of the victims in our thoughts and prayers,'' he said.

In a Target store across the parking lot from Lane Bryant, terrified customers were herded to the front as police with pistols and rifles drawn went up and down the aisles and into storerooms searching for the gunman.

''I was so scared I couldn't think,'' said Selena Kujawa, who had just entered the store with her 5-year-old son when it was locked down. After about an hour, customers were told to leave.

''They told us to get in our cars and get out of here,'' Kujawa said.

Kujawa said her son was still asking about the shooting long after they had gotten home.

''He asked `What happened to the people? Did they catch the bad guy?''' she said. ''There will be lots of nightmares tonight.''

The Lane Bryant was open at the time of the shootings. Police would not identify the victims, but said they ranged in age from 22 to 37. Four were from suburban Chicago and one was from South Bend, Ind.

The family of Carrie Hudek Chiuso, 33, of Frankfort, said she was one of the victims.

''She is the most wonderful person, and that maniac took a piece of all of us,'' Jennifer Hudek, Chiuso's sister-in-law, told the Chicago Tribune for a story posted on its Web site Saturday.

Hudek declined to comment Sunday.

Chiuso, a 1993 graduate of Homewood-Flossmoor High School, was a social worker at the school.

''Carrie was deeply loved by faculty and staff,'' school spokesman Dave Thieman said in a statement. ''She had a real touch with students. The entire H-F family is deeply saddened.''

The police chief said no further information would be made available until Sunday afternoon, after forensic exams were completed.

Police allowed shoppers into parts of the strip mall later Saturday, but had cordoned off the store.

The small red and brown brick Lane Bryant is part of a cluster of four or five stores isolated on one side of a large blacktop parking lot, with big box stores including Target and Best Buy several hundred yards away.

Messages left at Lane Bryant Brand headquarters were not immediately returned.

Lane Bryant is part of plus-size women's apparel retailer Charming Shoppes Inc., based in Bensalem, Pa., which also owns the Fashion Bug and Catherines brands.

    Hunt on for Man Who Shot 5 at Ill. Store, NYT, 3.2.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Store-Shooting.html

Robber Kills 5 Women

at Store in Chicago Suburb

February 3, 2008
The New York Times
By CATRIN EINHORN and MONICA DAVEY

TINLEY PARK, Ill. — The authorities in this suburb southwest of Chicago were engaged in a huge search on Saturday evening for a man they say shot and killed five women in a clothing store during a robbery attempt gone wrong.

With help from about 10 nearby police agencies, the Tinley Park authorities searched for the man — described as wearing a black waist-length winter coat, jeans and a knit cap — with helicopters using infrared devices. They looked for him on public bus lines throughout the suburbs. And they studied every surveillance video they could find from stores in a mile-and-a-half radius.

As night fell on the snow-covered strip mall where the shooting occurred, about 30 miles from downtown Chicago, Sgt. T. J. Grady of the Tinley Park Police Department said that no one had been arrested, but that law enforcement officials were “pulling out every stop we can.”

Sergeant Grady said the police received a 911 call at 10:44 a.m. Saturday, summoning them to a Lane Bryant store in the mall, near Interstate 80. The police found five women dead in a back room, he said. The store had no video security system, the authorities said.

Late Saturday night, the authorities had not released any of the victims’ names and were still trying to find some of their relatives. The women ranged in age from 22 to 37, said Chief Michael O’Connell of the Tinley Park police.

At least one of the victims was an employee of the store, the police said, and it was unclear how many of the others were shoppers. At least one Chicago-area family told local newspapers that a relative, a social worker who had been shopping at the store, was among the dead.

A witness outside the store saw a man fleeing through the front door, Sergeant Grady said, providing the authorities with the description — though a fairly broad one — that agencies throughout the region were distributing. The Chicago Police Department, which sent a helicopter to help in the search, said it had distributed the suspect’s description to all its police districts, giving special note to those with strip malls and other Lane Bryant locations.

Just after the shooting, the strip mall here was locked down. People inside stores were ordered to stay put, and those outside were kept away. Officers could be seen canvassing shops and the rest of the mall, sometimes clutching their weapons while peering into parked cars. Search dogs were brought in with the hopes that a trail had been left behind.

After about an hour, Sergeant Grady said, much of the lockdown ended. The police were convinced that the man was long gone. “We have to allow regular shopping, allow regular retail work to go back,” he said, explaining the decision.

That left a peculiar scene several hours later, as shoppers, some oblivious to all that had gone on, browsed inside stores even as yellow police tape encircled parts of the parking lot. Some shops closed for the day, like a crafts store that bore a handmade yellow sign noting in marker that it would reopen Sunday. Others swiftly got back to work and were doing business at a fairly regular clip by late in the day.

As they learned what had happened, many shoppers seemed stunned at the thought of such violence in Tinley Park, a rapidly growing village of about 60,000 straddling Will and Cook Counties.

Patricia Parrish, 42, clasped her hands to her chest when she learned what had happened.

Delores Thompson, 52, said, “Oh my god, that is unbelievable.” Ms. Thompson said she had moved to nearby Frankfort not long ago because she heard it was safe and had good schools. “I’d like to go home and make sure I locked my patio door,” she said.

Tracey Jackson, 30, of nearby Matteson, described Tinley Park as a friendly place with a relatively modest crime rate and its share of “soccer moms.”

“Usually, if you drop your wallet out here, someone will hunt you down to get it,” Ms. Jackson said. “This is a place where if you left your purse in your car, nobody is going to go bust out your window or anything.

But, Ms. Jackson added, the shootings Saturday would be sure to change attitudes. “Now we’re going to be a little more on the alert,” she said.

Around the state, condolences began pouring in from political and community leaders.

“There is no imaginable justification for the deadly and random violence that stole those innocent lives in Tinley Park today,” Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich said in a statement.

Back in the strip center in Tinley Park, Melissa Potempa, 32, an insurance agent, was in search of ketchup, blue cheese and peppers from a store here for a Super Bowl party. She said she had shopped at this Lane Bryant store in the past, but did not think she would any longer, not after this.
 

Catrin Einhorn reported from Tinley Park, Ill., and Monica Davey from Chicago.

Eric Ferkenhoff contributed reporting from Chicago.

    Robber Kills 5 Women at Store in Chicago Suburb, NYT, 3.2.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/03/us/03chicago.html