Ryun Ferrell, the husband of former Emporian Deborah Gladow Ferrell, was wrapping up a practice session for the Northern Illinois University women’s tennis team when the shooting began.
“A friend of mine actually heard it on the news in Kansas City and called me and said, ‘You’d better turn on the television,’ so I did,” Deborah’s mother, Diane Gladow of Emporia, said.
“We watched the coverage for a while, but we didn’t really know where our son-in-law was,” Gladow said. “As soon as we heard it was in a classroom, we felt a little bit better.”
They realized that, as head coach, it was unlikely that Ferrell would be in a classroom.
Six people, including the gunman, were killed.
Despite the overload on the telephone circuits as people tried to get in touch with their families, Ferrell soon called the Gladows from his office to say that he was safe and so was his team.
The university had been practicing for about a year in order to be prepared should an event like that happen, and the emergency plan worked well. Campus police were on the scene in about two minutes, and other emergency workers arrived 10 to 20 minutes later, Gladow said.
In another part of DeKalb, news of the shootings reached the school where Deborah Ferrell teaches. The incident happened around 3 p.m., and her students were due to board buses at 3:30.
“She was concerned not only because of the shooting, they didn’t know whether to let the students go,” Gladow said. “She was worried because she had to go pick up her little boy. He was in day care, and the day care is right by the campus.”
Deborah eventually was able to circle around the scene and get close enough to pick up the child.
“All the traffic, she said, was coming the other way because the kids were evacuating the campus,” Gladow said. “... There were so many police and fire and ambulances and the helicopters circling above. She said it just didn’t seem real. It’s a quiet community and she just couldn’t take it in that this was actually happening.”
They learned later that a friend of one of the girls on the tennis team had been wounded during the shootings.
“He had six wounds, but it was just one shot. He was going to be all right,” Gladow said.
For Diane Gladow and husband, Dean, the reassuring telephone calls from the Ferrells brought relief.
“Of course it was a tragedy and nothing will take away from that,” Gladow said. “We were happy our little family was okay. You never know for sure where your kids are, if they’re in the middle of it or if they’re safe.”
The Associated Press reported this morning that the gunman who killed five people in an NIU lecture hall before committing suicide was identified as 27-year-old former student Steven Kazmierczak, according to Florida authorities and a university official familiar with the investigation.
Polk County, Fla., sheriff’s officials said they were asked to notify the suspect’s father — Robert Kazmierczak of Lakeland, Fla. — of his son’s death.
“His son, Steven, was the shooting suspect at Northern Illinois University,” said Carrie Rodgers, spokeswoman for the sheriff’s office.
Illinois authorities have not confirmed the suspect’s identity, but a university official told The Associated Press it is the younger Kazmierczak. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the identity has not been officially released.
The motive of the killer was still not known, officials said. The gunman also wounded 15 people in Thursday’s attack, which sent panicked students fleeing for the exits.
“There is no note or threat that I know of,” NIU President John Peters said on today’s “Good Morning America” on ABC. “By all accounts that we can tell right now (he) was a very good student that the professors thought well of.”
The shooter had been a graduate student in sociology at Northern Illinois as recently as spring 2007, but was not currently enrolled at the 25,000-student campus, Peters said. He also said the gunman had no record of police contact or an arrest record while attending the university, about 65 miles west of Chicago.
He was currently enrolled as a graduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said NIU spokeswoman Melanie Magara.
DeKalb County Coroner Dennis J. Miller released the identities of the four victims who died in his county: Daniel Parmenter, 20, of Westchester; Catalina Garcia, 20, of Cicero; Ryanne Mace, 19, of Carpentersville; and Julianna Gehant, 32, of Meridan.
Two other victims died after being transferred to hospitals in other counties, Miller said. Winnebago County Coroner Sue Fiduccia said a female victim died in her jurisdiction but has not been identified pending notification of family.
Witnesses said the gunman, dressed in black and wearing a stocking cap, emerged from behind a screen on the stage of 200-seat Cole Hall and opened fire just as the class was about to end around 3 p.m. Officials said 162 students were registered for the class but it was unknown how many were there Thursday.
Allyse Jerome, 19, a sophomore from Schaumburg, said the gunman burst through a stage door and pulled out a gun.
“Honestly, at first everyone thought it was a joke,” Jerome said. Everyone hit the floor, she said. Then she got up and ran, but tripped. She said she felt like “an open target.”
“He could’ve decided to get me,” Jerome said. “I thought for sure he was gonna get me.”
Lauren Carr said she was sitting in the third row when she saw the shooter walk through a door on the right-hand side of the stage, pointing a gun straight ahead.
“I personally Army-crawled halfway up the aisle,” said Carr, a 20-year-old sophomore. “I said I could get up and run or I could die here.”
She said a student in front of her was bleeding, “but he just kept running.”
“I heard this girl scream, ’Run, he’s reloading the gun!”’
More than a hundred students cried and hugged as they gathered outside the Phi Kappa Alpha house early today to remember Parmenter, the 20-year-old sophomore from Elmhurst, who was one of those killed.
“I’m not angry,” his stepfather, Robert Greer, told the Tribune. “I’m just sad, and I know that right now what I need to do is comfort my wife.”
The campus was closed today. Students were urged to call their parents “as soon as possible” and were offered counseling at any residence hall, according to the school Web site.
The school was closed for one day during final exam week in December after campus police found threats, including racial slurs and references to shootings earlier in the year at Virginia Tech, scrawled on a bathroom wall in a dormitory. Police determined after an investigation that there was no imminent threat and the campus was reopened. Peters said he knew of no connection between that incident and Thursday’s attack.
PULL QUOTE
“There were so many police and fire and ambulances and the helicopters circling above. She said it just didn’t seem real.”
Diane Gladow
speaking of her daughter