Northern Illinois University Shooting - Shooting

Shooting

At approximately 3:05 p.m. CST, Steven Kazmierczak entered a large auditorium-style lecture hall in Cole Hall (Auditorium 101) with approximately 120 students, where an oceanography class was in session. Kazmierczak was wearing dark brown boots with laces, jeans, a black t-shirt with the word "Terrorist" written across the chest imposed over an image of an assault rifle; a coat; a black knit hat; and a black utility belt with two magazine holsters, a holster for a handgun, three handguns (a 9mm Glock 19, a 9mm Kurz Sig Sauer P232, and a .380 Hi-Point CF380), eight loaded magazines, and a knife. He also carried in a 12 gauge Remington Sportsman 48 shotgun concealed in a guitar case. Once he armed himself, he went to the auditorium, where he entered at the extreme southwest corner of the room. This led directly to the stage in front of the classroom; Kazmierczak used that position to fire into the crowd of students. He opened the door with such extreme force that many witnesses described him as "kicking the door in".

He next shot at the instructor, who was standing on the east side of the stage. The instructor tried to run out the exit at the southeast corner but that door was locked. The instructor ran toward the east end of the classroom out the main exits, in which the students were trying to exit. Some students who were not able to immediately escape hid under or in between the seats. When Kazmericzak paused to reload after firing three rounds, some students shouted "He's reloading" and began to escape. Others continued to hide or were too shocked to react.

After shooting all six shotgun rounds, Kazmierczak fired on the room's remaining occupants with the 9mm Glock pistol, firing a total of approximately 50 rounds. He was reported to have walked up and down the west aisle and directly in front of or on the stage, firing at people as he went. He shot and killed himself before police reached the room. The police recovered 55 unexpended rounds of ammunition from the scene, including two fully loaded magazines containing rounds for a .380 semi-automatic pistol.

A total of 25 people were shot, six of whom died (including the perpetrator, who shot himself before police arrived). One witness reported that the gunman shot at least 30 rounds; police later collected 48 shell casings and 6 shotgun shells.

At the time of the shootings, Kazmierczak was a graduate student in the school of social work at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He was a former NIU Sociology graduate student. NIU Police Chief Donald Grady described him as "an outstanding student," who reportedly had stopped taking psychiatric medication recently and became "somewhat erratic".