Police find no motive for Illinois campus shooting
 

CBC news..

Six people, including the gunman, died in the shooting.

Investigators are continuing to scour the campus of Northern Illinois University Friday, a day after a gunman shot and killed five students and took his own life.

Police say they have found no motive for the shooting, which happened Thursday afternoon in a university lecture hall as students were attending an oceanography class.

Sixteen other people were injured, but their conditions are not known.

The university website said the gunman, who shot and killed himself, was a graduate student in sociology who last enrolled in spring 2007. Police said he was armed with a shotgun and two handguns.

Four people died at the scene, including three students and the gunman, while two other students died at hospital, university president John Peters said Thursday.

Authorities did not release any other details about the gunman or identify the victims.
Peters told a news conference Thursday evening that witnesses said "someone dressed in black came out from behind a screen at the front of the classroom and opened fire with a shotgun."

He called it a "brief, rapid-fire assault."

"This thing started and ended in a matter of seconds," university police Chief Donald Grady said.

About 200 students and other mourners gathered on the campus around midnight for a candlelight vigil for the victims. Some cried and hugged, while others prayed.

The school will remain closed Friday and all weekend activities on campus have been cancelled.

Students fled in panic

"People were crawling on each other, trampling each other," said student Desiree Smith, who lay down and worked her way toward the back of the lecture hall.

"As I got near the door, I got up and I started running."

Student Jerry Santoni said he saw the gunman shoot at the teacher.

"After that, I proceeded to get down as fast as I could," he said.

The teacher was wounded but is expected to recover, Peters said.

A student who was in the lecture hall when the shooting began told the university paper that the scene was chaotic.

"Some girl got hit in the eye, a guy got hit in the leg," George Gaynor told the Northern Star.

The university, which has about 25,000 students enrolled, is about 100 kilometres west of Chicago.

Re: Police find no motive for Illinois campus shooting
 

Is this becoming some kind of new trend or something?

Re: Police find no motive for Illinois campus shooting
 

As much as I hate to say it, it certainly appears that way. Wtf is wrong with these kids?

Re: Police find no motive for Illinois campus shooting
 

I think a more important question would be what makes something be so wrong with these kids?

Re: Police find no motive for Illinois campus shooting
 

Thanks to the media it's a sure way of getting noticed...

Re: Police find no motive for Illinois campus shooting
 

Bit killing yourself afterward I mean, if you wanted attention for a brief moment and are prepared to end your life as the price for it, wow.

Re: Police find no motive for Illinois campus shooting
 

I'd think wanting to end their lives is not so much the price as the main reason they plan something of the sort. If you're dead anyway, you needn't worry about consequences so you might as well strike back at whomever you think made your life so miserable in the process, whether that's one or more individuals or the system.

Re: Police find no motive for Illinois campus shooting
 

Yeah, seems like people are getting the idea of, "Hey, they can't punish me if I'm dead."

Kinda makes you hesitate about the idea of college anymore, don't you think?

Re: Police find no motive for Illinois campus shooting
 

I just heard an update that one of the injured students died in hospital.. :(

Re: Police find no motive for Illinois campus shooting
 

That's the difference between rational thinking peeps and nutters. Instead of beating their asses with a big stick and live to tell the tale and laugh about it, they close the book with a big bang. I choose the stick any day of the week.

Re: Police find no motive for Illinois campus shooting
 

Well it's not a new trend it's been going on for decades in the USA. :(

If only they would arm every USA school kids from 3 years old upwards with ak47's all these killings would stop. And if they did not stop the shootings then maybe we should give them grenades as well.

Re: Police find no motive for Illinois campus shooting
 

You think by arming everybody, the shooting would stop...?

Re: Police find no motive for Illinois campus shooting
 

Of course not :rolleyes:

But it's our g-dam con sti tu shonal rights to bear arms! if anybody in the class was to draw a weapon from their bag the class could all shoot him! ok so a few kids would get killed pulling out an MP3 player but hey it could have been an M16!

Re: Police find no motive for Illinois campus shooting
 

I gather that's the general belief of the pro-gun side in the firearms debate, yes. If it doesn't prevent a shooting it's a way to stop it in its tracks and all that stuff. Not that that needs elaborate discussion in this thread, if you ask me.

Re: Police find no motive for Illinois campus shooting
 

Everyone is already armed...otherwise how would these kids get guns so easily?

Re: Police find no motive for Illinois campus shooting
 

Even nut jobs with no connection to schools do their shooting, there, and churches. Why? Because nobody is armed. Ever hear of anybody shooting up a gun convention or a police function?

Re: Police find no motive for Illinois campus shooting
 

Ever heard of a kid shooting without a gun?

Edit: if I wanted to get a gun here in Europe, it'd be a pretty hard thing, even being 22 and without a prior criminal conviction...in the US it seems that it's just a question of taking the parents' gun from a non-securely locked drawer or buying a gun from a local dealer...

Re: Police find no motive for Illinois campus shooting
 

For the record (and before I get lynched by the pro-gun crowds...) :P

-I don't have a problem with people having guns as long as they can responsibly keep them away from those who shouldn't have them.
-If they can't responsibly do that, then by owning guns they are putting innocent lives at risk.

Re: Police find no motive for Illinois campus shooting
 

The old gun debate aye...

If there's one thing I've learned it is that gun ownership is a bad thing depending on the culture. If it's a culture that has had gun ownership for years then it is generally a bad thing to take them away. On the other hand, it would be bad for a no gun ownership country to suddenly allow guns. It all depends on the history and culture around guns that the country in question has. As such, I think it's a generally acceptable idea in the US (if only to not give criminals the upper hand suddenly!), but not in Europe.

Re: Police find no motive for Illinois campus shooting
 

Yeah, growing up in a country where guns were outlawed and only accessible by law enforcement (even the police don't carry guns on a daily basis), I always saw it as a major flaw for a country to allow arms to be purchased in shops. Indeed, I stared in disbelief the first time I saw a gunshop in the USA. The cops never had a problem with their lack of firearms because most criminals they come across don't have them either. There are exceptions where someone will get an imported weapon, but the law have access to them if need be. Since I amn't used to it, even seeing an american cop walk by me unnerved me because he had a gun on his belt and walked around like it was nothing.

Re: Police find no motive for Illinois campus shooting
 

I am by no means advocating taking their guns away...it's easy to see that that would be an impossibility with everyone hanging onto their rights with both hands. I'm simply saying that they should act with much more care and much more responsibly with their guns.

Re: Police find no motive for Illinois campus shooting
 

There's only one 'plus' side I see to gun ownership here in the states, it'd be pretty damned hard to be invaded, we're an army unto ourselves.

A few months ago here in the southern Indiana, northern Kentucky area, there was a teenager that got into an argument with his mother, went into his parent's room (which apparently housed a sniper rifle), went down to the nearest highway and started picking drivers off, ended up killing 2-3 people as they went down the road.

Personally, I'm all for fist fighting, what happened to beating the crap out of the person that pissed you off?