By DPA
Washington : A gunman went on a rampage in a lecture hall on a university campus in DeKalb, Illinois, 100 km west of Chicago, killing five people and wounding 16 before shooting himself, authorities said.
Northern Illinois University (NIU) President John Peters announced late Thursday that the suspected gunman was dead “apparently from a self-inflicted wound”.
Police have identified the suspect but have yet to name him. Peters gave details of him as a former NIU sociology student.
A graduate student was teaching an introductory geology class about 3 p.m. in a large auditorium inside Cole Hall, one of NIU’s main classroom buildings, when the gunman burst onto the stage at the front of the room, armed with a shotgun and two handguns, Peters said.
He described the attack as rapid and brief, ending with the gunman apparently killing himself before the arrival of police, who were on the scene within three minutes, Peters said.
The gunman and three of his victims died at the scene. Two others died at a local hospital.
The five victims included four women and one man. All those shot by the gunman were enrolled at NIU including the instructor, who was among the wounded, Peters said.
The campus was placed on security lockdown for more than an hour on word of the incident.
The assailant was described by several witnesses as a young man, apparently college-aged, dressed in black or dark clothes. He reportedly first fired the shotgun before turning to the handguns and inflicting several head wounds, according to reports.
“Our records confirmed (the gunman) was not currently enrolled, but in spring of 2007 was enrolled as a graduate student in sociology,” Peters said.
Shannon Smith, 21, told the Daily Herald, a newspaper that covers a large swath of Chicago’s western suburbs, that she was planning to meet friends who were attending class inside the lecture hall when the gunfire began.
“We saw bloody kids coming out of the building and people were frantic,” she said. “People were running all over the place.”
The university website urged all students to contact their families.
All NIU classes were cancelled until Tuesday. Monday was already a holiday.