US:The man who opened fire at an Illinois university on Thursday, killing five people, was an "outstanding" graduate student who became erratic after he stopped taking medication for an undisclosed condition, police said yesterday.
Stephen Kazmierczak (27) shot himself after his shooting spree in the Northern Illinois University lecture hall killed five students and injured 15 others.
"He was an outstanding student. He was someone that was revered by the faculty and staff and students alike," university police chief Donald Grady said.
"We had no indication at all that this would be the type of person to engage in this type of activity."
Kazmierczak was enrolled as a graduate student in sociology at the university last year but he moved to a different college recently. He left no note and gave no indication of why he targeted a geography class on Thursday but police dismissed rumours that the Valentine's Day massacre was prompted by an unhappy love affair.
"He had been somewhat erratic in the last two weeks," Mr Grady said, adding that Kazmierczak's family said he had stopped taking some medication recently.
Witnesses said that, minutes before the end of a geology class, Kazmierczak stepped out from behind a curtain at the front of the auditorium, dressed in black and wearing a stocking cap and armed with a shotgun and three handguns.
As screaming students ducked for cover, he sprayed bullets into the crowded classroom, reloading his shotgun and firing at least 48 bullets.
"He just fired directly into the audience. He didn't say a word. It didn't look like he was aiming directly at someone. I think he was trying to hit as many people as he could," said John Giovanni, a student in the class.
"He was shooting from the hip. He was just shooting. I was running but I was hurtling over people in the foetal position." Mr Grady said that Kazmierczak parked near the lecture hall, and carried his shotgun in a guitar case and the pistols and ammunition strapped to his body, concealed by a coat.
Two police officers arrived in the area less than a minute after the shooting began and several other officers reached the scene two minutes later but the gunman killed himself before officers entered the building.
The massacre was the fifth school shooting in a week, following episodes in Ohio, Louisiana, Tennessee and California that left a total of five people dead. Last year 32 students and faculty were killed by a mentally disturbed student at Virginia Tech University in the deadliest massacre ever at a US college.
Last December police at Northern Illinois University 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.
Police said that all the guns used in Thursday's shooting were purchased legally and that Kazmierczak had a valid firearm owner's identification card, which is required for all Illinois residents who buy or possess firearms.
One of Kazmierczak's former teachers said he was "probably the best student in the class" and a website for a student group focused on educating the community about the criminal justice system listed Kazmierczak as vice-president. He wrote a paper on prison issues, "Self Injury in Correctional Settings".
Mr Grady said the gunman had no previous police contact and staff and students at the university recalled nothing in his behaviour that would predict such violent behaviour.
"There were no red flags," Mr Grady said. "Unfortunately, these things happen."