18 Wounded, 4 Dead After N. Illinois University School Shooting

A black-clad masked gunman entered a crowded 200 student Geology lecture Thursday on the campus of Northern Illinois University, armed with a shotgun and 2 handguns, he unleashed a barrage of gunfire at random into the crowd, killing at least 4, and wounding 18 others before taking his own life, police say.

The shooter, dressed in black, walked out from behind a screen in a geology class in a 600-seat lecture hall and opened fire, NIU president John Peters said during a 6:30 p.m. ET press conference. The gunman used a shotgun and two handguns, Police Chief Donald Grady said. The police know the identity of the gunman but are not releasing it at this time. He was not a student at the DeKalb campus, but it appears he was a student elsewhere, Grady said. Many victims were shot in the head, said Theresa Comitas, spokeswoman for Kishwaukee Community Hospital, about 10 minutes from the school. At least three victims are in critical condition, eight are in stable condition and six are in good condition, a hospital official told CNN.

Paul Sundstrom of Rockford, Ill., one of 150 to 200 students in the geography class when the shooting took place, told NBC affiliate WMAQ that the gunman was a thin white man wearing a black “beanie” and a black trench coat. The man entered the room from the back, behind the professor, and began shooting without saying a word, Sundstrom said. Firing in the general direction of the students, he emptied his clip of ammunition and calmly reloaded before resuming firing. “He just walked in and just started shooting at people randomly,” Sundstrom said. “I crawled out to the main aisle, then just got up and ran and turned around and saw him shooting.”

Such a horrible tragedy, but here’s the kicker: someone, most likely the coward behind this senseless massacre, wrote on a dorm wall what he planned to do, manifested in todays horrific scene. MSNBC has this:

Northern Illinois University was shut down for a day in December after graffiti were scrawled on a restroom wall warning of a shooting on campus. A spokesman said the warning, which was discovered Dec. 10, made reference to massacre of 33 people last year at Virginia Tech University, but he said it could not be immediately determined whether the threat was related to Thursday’s shootings.

The Chicago Sun-Times reported at the time that an unknown person posted the graffiti in the Grant Towers D complex residence hall. It included a racial slur and the notation, “What time? The VA tech shooters messed up w/ having only one shooter.”