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Campus Massacres Continue
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Posted by: forwardone
Valentine's Day campus massacre gunman was award-winning criminal justice student
An award-winning graduate student of sociology who served on a student criminal justice group has been identified as the gunman who killed six students in a lecture hall at his former university in Illinois on Valentine’s Day.
The gunman who shot 21 students yesterday is reported to have been honoured by Northern Illinois University with a dean’s award for his sociology work.
The graduate student also served as vice-president of the Academic Criminal Justice Association chapter at the university, a group that aims to teach the local community “about and promote knowledge and understanding of all areas of the criminal justice system, especially corrections and juvenile justice.”
According to the Chicago Tribune, the gunman had established himself as an authority on prison systems, having co-authored a manuscript on self-injury in prison and the role of religion in the formation of early prisons in the United States.
Both papers were written under the guidance of Jim Thomas, a professor emeritus at Northern Illinois University and a renowned criminal-justice expert.
The gunman is said to have grown up in a town in north-eastern Illinois, though his parents had moved to Florida shortly before the death of his mother in 2004. He is said to be a current graduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Police are yet to formally identify the gunman.
John Peters, the university president, said the gunman had been a student on campus last year before transferring to another institution. “The information we have right now indicates he did not have any record of police contact or a prior arrest record,” said Mr Peters.
Armed with a shotgun and two handguns, he had walked onto stage in the final minutes of a geology lecture and shot 21 students before turning the gun on himself. Police said he still had rounds of ammunition left.
A motive has not been established for the attack – one line of inquiry in the investigation is to establish why the gunman struck on Valentine’s Day, and whether the attack was motivated by a desire for vengeance over a past relationship or love affair.
The shooter has been described as a thin white man dressed in black and wearing a stocking cap. He walked onto the stage from a side door in the last five minutes of a geology lecture, in what students at first took to be a sick practical joke.
He then calmly proceeded to shoot the graduate student who was delivering the lecture and fire into the auditorium, killing six, before committing suicide.
One of the dead was named by the Northern Illinois University student newspaper as Dan Parmenter, a second year student studying finance. He had worked in the newspaper’s accounts department as an advertising representative.
Two other students who were seriously wounded were also identified. Maria Ruiz Santana, was reported to be in surgery and in a critical condition, while Unnum Rahman, 19, was said to be in a serious condition and in surgery after receiving gunshot wounds to her right eye and arm.
As their names emerged, students gathered for a candlelight vigil on the campus, which is near Chicago.
“He was quiet. He just stood on the stage in front of everybody and just started shooting,” Sheila, one of the students in the hall, told a radio station. “I saw him holding the gun and it was huge. I thought it was fake and then I realised he was really shooting at people and I got down,” she said. “I saw a lot of blood. I have blood all over my clothes.”
It is the fifth shooting at an American college in the last seven days and comes ten months after a student killed 32 people at Virginia Tech University.
Lessons have been learnt since that massacre: a security plan was implemented, the campus was locked down, students in dormitories were told to stay in their rooms, police were on the scene in minutes and within 20 minutes the presence of a possible gunman was announced on the university website. Before that the news flashed around the campus as students texted and phoned each other to warn of the shooting.
Jerry Santoni was in a back row when he saw the gunman enter a service door to the stage. “I saw him shoot one round at the teacher,” he said. “After that, I proceeded to get down as fast as I could.”
George Gaynor told the student newspaper the Northern Star that the shooter was “a skinny white guy with a stocking cap on.”
“Some girl got hit in the eye, a guy got hit in the leg,” said Mr Gaynor said outside the lecture hall minutes later.
Students dived to the floor. Lauren Carr, who had been sitting in the third row when she saw the shooter walk through the door on the right-hand side of the stage, crawled up the aisle towards the exit. “I said I could get up and run or I could die here,” she said. A student in front of her was bleeding, she said, “but he just kept running. I heard this girl scream, ‘Run, he’s reloading the gun.”’
Desiree Smith recalled people crawling over each other to get to the door. “I kept thinking, ‘Oh God, he’s going to shoot me. Oh God, I’m dead. I’m dead. I’m dead,”’ she said. “People were crawling on each other, trampling each other. As I got near the door, I got up and I started running.”
Some students thought the gunman had particular targets. Edward Robinson, said that he seemed to concentrate on one part of the lecture hall. “It was almost like he knew who he wanted to shoot,” Mr Robinson said. “He knew who and where he wanted to be firing at.”
The Kishwaukee Community Hospital received 18 victims — four critical with head wounds — yesterday afternoon, according to the hospital’s website. One male was transferred in critical condition and died at OSF St. Anthony Medical Centre in Rockford, an official said. The graduate student who was holding the class was wounded but expected to recover. As the names of the dead emerged, friends held candlelight vigils on the campus.
The university had been placed on a security alert in December after police found threats on a bathroom wall laced with racial slurs, references to the Virginia Tech shooting and a warning that “things will change most hastily” in the final days of the semester.
Mr Peters said he did not think Thursday’s shooting was related to the threats and said that while security has been heightened there was not much more officials could have done.
“I don’t know of any plan that can prevent this tragedy,” he told reporters. “Unless we lock every door I don’t know how we can keep people out."
The college was closed today: the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms had sent 15 agents to the scene, according to a spokesman. The FBI also was assisting the investigation.
A week of violence in American schools and colleges
February 7:
A woman teacher was shot and stabbed by her husband at a school in Ohio. The woman survived while the gunman later killed himself during a stand-off. (On the same day a man opened fire on a city council meeting in the St. Louis suburb of Kirkwood, killing five people before he was shot dead by police.)
February 8:
A woman shot and killed two fellow students in a classroom before committing suicide at Louisiana Technical College in Baton Rouge
February 11:
A 17-year-old is accused of shooting a classmate in the leg at a school cafeteria in Memphis, Tennessee. His victim survived.
February 12:
A pupil at a school in Oxnard, California was shot in the head by a fellow student. The victim died of his injuries on Wednesday.
February 14:
A gunman kills five and wounds 16 at Northern Illinois University
timesonline.co.uk
Posted by: forwardone
Yet Americans insist on their `right` to bear arms. 