Shooter opens fire at Northern Illinois U.

Jamie Shepard has a science class in Cole Hall on Wednesdays and Fridays at 3 p.m. at Northern Illinois University. But if her class met on Thursdays, she would have shared the lecture hall with a gunman.

Six people were killed, and 16 others were injured when a former NIU student opened fire Thursday afternoon, multiple news sources reported late Thursday. Eighteen students were transported to Kishwaukee Community Hospital in DeKalb, Ill.

"I know that if the shooter would have picked yesterday or tomorrow to do that, that I would've been in that exact classroom at that time," said Shepard, a freshman biological science major at NIU, in a telephone interview Thursday night.

The shooting took place shortly after 3 p.m. The gunman shot himself after opening fire in an ocean sciences class.

NIU is approximately 65 miles outside of Chicago and has 25,000 undergraduate students, most from Illinois.

The shooter, who has yet to be identified, was a graduate student in sociology at the university in 2007 but was no longer enrolled, said NIU president John G. Peters at a news conference.

Police said there were three weapons found on the shooter - two handguns and the shotgun he used with extra ammunition.

Witnesses in the classroom said the gunman appeared from behind a curtain on the stage of the lecture hall and began to open fire without saying a word, according to reports from The New York Times. There were 162 people enrolled in the class.

"It's really scary at a university setting because as you know at Syracuse or any place else, its such an open setting, " said Chris Jones, an associate professor and chair of political science at NIU and a 1995 graduate of Syracuse University in a telephone interview. "Anybody can really go anywhere."

At 3:20 p.m., the university issued a warning that there was a report of a possible gunman on campus. The administration told students to "get to a safe area and take precautions until given the all clear. Avoid the King Commons and all buildings in that vicinity," according to the university's Web site.

Shortly after, the administration announced that classes for Thursday and today were cancelled.

Shepard, the NIU freshman, was sitting in her boyfriend's dorm room when his roommate walked in and told her about the shooting

"He had to walk by Cole Hall, and he said that he saw people running from there, and that there had been a shooting," she said. "At first I thought he was kidding because he said it with a sort of half smile on his face, but then I realized that the half smile was out of disbelief not because was telling a joke."

Hugh Baugher, a junior electrical engineering major, was in a computer lab when he first heard what happened.

"I was startled, but it took a while to sink in," he said in a telephone interview.

The campus was somber, he said. He compared the shootings on NIU's campus to the shootings at Virginia Tech in April last year.

On April 16, Cho Seung-Hui, a student at Virginia Tech, shot 32 students and wounded 15 others.

"You know how the V.T. students said they couldn't believe it could happen to them," Baugher said. "Well I thought that it would never happen this close to me."

Jones, the NIU professor, said, "We see incidents like Virginia Tech and you don't think that it could happen on your institution. It's very troubling. But I think it's a sign of the times that these tragic incidents can occur at any university and at any setting in the United States."

SU recently implemented a program meant for emergency situations on campus like school shootings. Orange Alert, SU's Crisis Alert Notification System, sends e-mails, text messages and telephone calls to students and faculty in case of a crisis.

Some students who signed up for the program reported they did not receive alerts when the system was tested last Friday.

"With this test, we took the product out of the box and ran it," Kevin Morrow told the Daily Orange on Tuesday. "Now that we tested it, we can make adjustments and customize it."

Tim Sydlo, an SU junior international relations and Spanish major, said he wants the system to be fixed soon.

"I hope that the university recognizes the importance of having an emergency system and can implement a very efficient system in a timely fashion," he said.

Morgan Freeman, a sophomore political science and African-American studies major, said she felt horrible after hearing about the shooting.

"My condolences go out to them," Freeman said. "I think that it's horrible that people are restoring to killing people."

She suggested that more counseling centers may decrease shootings on college campuses.

But Jones said with the amount of shootings and tragedies that happen across the country, "unfortunately this is not anything that is systematic."

"How would feel if this was happening at Syracuse?" said Jones. "It's a very sad situation for the victims, for the students, the families and the institution. Unfortunately it's not just a problem here, it's a problem nationwide."

sdmusat@syr.edu