By John Gress
DEKALB, Illinois (Reuters) - A black-clad man fired into alecture hall packed with students at an Illinois university onThursday, killing five people and wounding 18 before shootinghimself dead, police and college officials said.
The gunman, who police said had a shotgun and two handguns,stepped onto the lecturer's stage near the end of amid-afternoon geology class at Northern Illinois University andbegan shooting down the room, sending terrified and bleedingstudents fleeing, witnesses said. He then shot himself on thesame stage.
Police on the 25,000-student college 65 miles (104 km) westof Chicago said the gunman was a former student but they didnot publicly identify him and said they did not know the motivein the latest in a series of shootings at U.S. colleges andhigh schools.
University President John Peters said there had been a"very brief rapid fire assault that ended with the gunmantaking his own life." He said those killed by the gunman wereall students -- four women and one man -- and that 4 were incritical condition in hospitals. The instructor teaching theclass survived, he said.
"I ducked behind the seats and ran out the door," studentZach Seward told the local Daily Chronicle newspaper.
"As I was running, I just kept waiting for something to hitme in the back. I didn't know where to run, tried to decidewhere it's safe to be, and there isn't anywhere safe."
FORMER STUDENT
Peters said the gunman was a sociology major who lastattended classes as a graduate student in the spring of 2007and who may have since enrolled at a different college. He saidhe had no police record or previous contact with police.
One student told local radio that roughly 140 students werein the classroom when the man opened fire. Ambulances swarmedonto the snow-covered campus and classes were cancelled for therest of the day and Thursday.
"Some girl got hit in the eye, a guy got hit in the leg,"George Gaynor, a student who was in the hall told the NorthernStar, the student newspaper on the campus.
Kristina Balluff, a student, said the gunman was dressed inblack pants and had fired randomly from the raised classroomstage.
"I looked at this girl next to me and actually said, 'isthis real?' I think the professor ... ducked out of the way."
Mass shootings are not rare in the United States, where guncontrol is less strict than in many countries and where thegun-ownership lobby is politically influential.
A university in Blacksburg, Virginia, Virginia Tech, becamethe site of the deadliest shooting rampage in modern U.S.history in April last year when a gunman killed 32 people andhimself.
Last week, a nursing student shot dead two women and killedherself in front of horrified classmates at a college inLouisiana.
In December, a threat was found scrawled on a wall atNorthern Illinois University referring to the Virginia shootingand threatening similar violence, but officials said they hadno reason to link that to Wednesday's incident.
(Reporting by Andrew Stern and Michael Conlon; Editing byStuart Grudgings)
