U.S. & World

DE KALB, Ill. (CBS) ― Several people have been shot on the Northern Illinois University campus.  University President John Peters says the gunman killed himself.

Officials say the danger has passed, reports CBS station WBBM-TV in Chicago.

Officials confirmed that several people were shot at Cole Hall, a large lecture hall on campus, shortly after 3 p.m. and the campus was immediately placed on lockdown.

Kishwaukee Community Hospital spokeswoman says it received 17 victims all with wounds from the shooting or flying debris, including three with serious injuries. She says she knows of no deaths at the hospital.

A school official reported that a professor giving a lecture at Cole Hall was among those injured.

Student journalists at the school's Northern Television Center reported that there were 18 victims.

It was initially reported that two people, including the gunman, were killed, but at a news conference Thursday evening, officials said they could not confirm any fatalities other than the gunman.

Lt. Gary Spangler of the DeKalb Police Department told the school newspaper, the Northern Star, that "The gunman is deceased," adding that the "majority of the incident happened in Cole Hall."

Katie Wagner, a student who was inside the classroom, tells WBBM-TV that there were 70 students inside room 101 at Cole Hall when the shooting happened.  She said the gunman entered from a side door near the front of the lecture hall and started to fire shots.

A viewer who e-mailed WBBM-TV said that her brother was in the lecture hall where the shooting happened. "He says that the gunman was a white male dressed in all black. He kicked the door in and opened fire. My brother dove under the desk, and popped his head up to see the gunman was reloading. He grabbed his girlfriend's hand and ran to the library where they been in lockdown since."

George Gaynor, a senior geography student, who was in Cole Hall when the shooting happened, told the student newspaper that the shooter was "a skinny white guy with a stocking cap on."
He described the scene immediately following the incident as terrifying and chaotic.

"Some girl got hit in the eye, a guy got hit in the leg," Gaynor said outside just minutes after the shooting occurred. "It was like five minutes before class ended too."

Witnesses said the young man carried a shotgun and a pistol. Student Edward Robinson told WLS-TV in Chicago that the gunman appeared to target students in one part of the lecture hall.

"It was almost like he knew who he wanted to shoot," Robinson said. "He knew who and where he wanted to be firing at."



DeKalb police said the scene was secure as of 3:40 p.m. and the suspect had been apprehended. There were multiple reports that the gunman killed himself. Officials said the immediate danger has passed.

"We heard rumors last month that there would be a shooting but no one believed it," said one student from Chicago interviewed following the incident. "Everything's going to change after this," she said. "Our parents are going to be scared to have us going to school here... There should be guards everywhere keeping an eye out."

Dominique Broxton, 22, a student from Oak Park, told the Chicago Tribune she could see two wounded students from her dorm room.
 
"The ambulance took away two students on the ground right outside my dorm," she said. "I don't know them. They looked bloody."

She said she saw a lot of confusion. "Students were running. People really didn't know what was going on. There is an intercom system inside the dorm. Someone came on and stated that someone had been caught. They said they caught the shooter and that we should remain calm and stay in our rooms. I am in my room now."

The campus will be closed on Friday.

"Police are trying to get everyone off campus,'' said student David Healy, who was near Cole Hall when the shooting happened. "At least five people have been pulled out on stretchers."

An alert on the university's Web site confirmed "several" people were taken away in ambulances.

On Feb. 8, a woman opened fire in a classroom and killed two other women at Louisiana Technical College, police said.

At a press conference, police said the shooting was confined to one classroom. The shooter apparently killed herself after shooting the other two women.

All three were dead at the scene.

On April 16, 2007 a gunman opened fire in a Virginia Tech dorm and then, two hours later, shot up a classroom building across campus, killing 32 people in the deadliest shooting rampage in U.S. history. The gunman committed suicide, bringing the death toll to 33.

Virginia Tech students bitterly complained that there were no public-address announcements on campus after the first burst of gunfire. Many said the first word they received from the university was an e-mail more than two hours into the rampage - around the time the gunman struck again.

Only two weeks earlier, a man and a woman were shot to death in the University of Washington's architecture building in an apparent murder-suicide, university police said.
Officers responding to reports of gunfire found the two and a handgun in an office on the fourth floor of Gould Hall, Assistant University Police Chief Ray Wittmier said.

The female victim, a 25-year-old university employee, had a restraining order against the man, who "almost certainly" shot her and took his own life, Wittmier said.

(© 2009 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)