Rampage baffles many who knew Ill. gunman

Authorities have not found a suicide note.

DEKALB, Ill. (AP) — If there is such a thing as a profile of a mass murderer, Steven Kazmierczak didn’t fit it: outstanding student, engaging, polite and industrious, with what looked like a bright future in the criminal justice field.

And yet Thursday, the 27-year-old Kazmierczak, armed with three handguns and a brand-new pump-action shotgun he had carried onto campus in a guitar case, stepped from behind a screen on the stage of a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University and opened fire on a geology class. He killed five students before committing suicide.

University Police Chief Donald Grady said, without giving details, that Kazmierczak had become erratic in the past two weeks after he had stopped taking his medication. But that seemed to come as news to many of those who knew him, and the attack itself was positively baffling.

“We had no indications at all this would be the type of person that would engage in such activity,” Grady said. He described the gunman as a good student during his time at NIU, and by all accounts a “fairly normal” person.

Exactly what set Kazmierczak off — and why he picked his former university and that particular lecture hall — remained a mystery. Police said they found no suicide note. Authorities were searching for a woman who police believe may have been Kazmierczak’s girlfriend.

Investigators learned that a week ago, on Feb. 9, Kazmierczak walked into a Champaign, gun store and picked up two guns — the Remington shotgun and a Glock 9mm handgun. He bought the two other handguns at the same shop — a Hi-Point .380 on Dec. 30 and a Sig Sauer on Aug. 6.

All four guns were bought legally from a federally licensed firearms dealer, said Thomas Ahern, an agency spokesman.

Kazmierczak graduated from NIU in 2007 and was a graduate student in sociology there before leaving last year.

Speaking Friday in Lakeland, Fla., Kazmierczak’s distraught father did not immediately provide any clues to what led to the bloodshed.

“Please leave me alone. ... This is a very hard time for me,” Robert Kazmierczak told reporters.