Another Virginia Tech Shooting

[Scales]

http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/St...arsity+massacre

A black-clad former student turned a university lecture hall into a Valentine's Day massacre on Thursday, killing five people and injuring 16 others before turning a gun on himself in the fifth US school shooting in a week, authorities said.

Armed with a shotgun and two handguns, he calmly stepped out from behind the curtain at the front of an auditorium just minutes before a geology class ended, officials and witnesses said.

Screams filled the hall as he sprayed a hail of bullets from the stage of the auditorium filled with dozens of students at Northern Illinois University.

"It started and ended within a matter of seconds," university police chief Donald Grady said at a press conference.

Police were in the room within two minutes of getting the call but did not have time to fire a single shot as the gunman was already dead on the stage.

"We have no apparent motive at this time."

The violence follows school shootings in Ohio, Louisiana, Tennessee and California that left a total of five dead.

Authorities gave no motive for the shooting and said the shooter had been a graduate sociology student last year but was currently not enrolled.

Witnesses described the shooter as a white male dressed in black around six-foot (1.8 meters) tall.

"He was aiming towards the crowd but I don't think he was aiming at a specific person," a witness named Sheila told WBBM radio.

"He was quiet. He just stood on the stage in front of everybody and started shooting.

"I saw him holding the gun and it was huge. I thought it was fake and then I realized he was really shooting at people and I got down," she said. "I saw a lot of blood. I have blood all over my clothes."

Students described, now-familiar scenes of panic, in the latest school shooting in the United States.

"I saw a lot of confusion," said Dominique Broxton, 22, describing the scene from her dorm room. "Students were running. People really didn't know what was going on."

The shooting came 10 months after 32 students and faculty were shot down by a mentally disturbed student at Virginia Tech University in the deadliest massacre ever at a US school.

Northern Illinois University was placed on a security alert in December after police 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.

But university president John Peters said he did not think Thursday's shooting was related to the threats and said that while security has been heightened there was not much more officials could have done.

"I don't know of any plan that can prevent this tragedy," he said at a press conference. "Unless we lock every door I don't know how we can keep people out."

Northern Illinois University, chartered in 1895, is a teaching and research institution with a student enrolment of more than 25,000 and nearly 1,300 teachers. It has 862 international students from 88 nations.

Broxton said 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. Where I am right now, there are a lot of police, at least a dozen. There are police cars and trucks everywhere."

"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."

[Homicidalheathen]

Wanna hear something strange? When this came on the news I was sitting in a room full of people talking. I was the only one interested in listening. Everyone else just shrugged their shoulders and went back to chatting.

Its just getting waaay to common

'Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage.'

[Hellion]

At least this cannot be blamed on goth ppl.but still wtf is wrong with humans these days

[torn asunder]

At least this cannot be blamed on goth ppl.but still wtf is wrong with humans these days

oh, they tried to infer it - did you notice how many times it was mentioned that the gunman was "dressed all in black"?

[Hellion]

oh, they tried to infer it - did you notice how many times it was mentioned that the gunman was "dressed all in black"?

Yeah I know,I just tried to ignore it.

[Scales]

I don't watch much t.v. which is why I found it somewhat interesting. It's pretty messed up that this is still so prevalent and nothing is being done about it.

As far as mainstream media I've started referring to it as a the pre-chewed cognitive dreamscape. Since mainstream media does censor stories each year and is heavily corporately influenced, it can't be fully trusted; or in the case of Fox, news is just entertainment.

[jadnifer]

This is a very very sad thing. It sickens me very much.

They need someone to blame it on. It just seems like the goth sub-culture is the one that they are picking on these days. Later it will be a different group of people. It's changing all the time.