Sixth victim dies in Illinois college shooting

Sprint · 02-15-2008, 10:48 AM

Truely a sad story

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A sixth victim of a shooting spree at an Illinois university has died after black-clad man fired into a lecture hall packed with students before killing himself, the DeKalb County Coroner's office said on Friday.

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Classes were canceled after Thursday's shooting at Northern Illinois University, a 25,000-student school 65 miles west of Chicago.

The gunman, who police said was a former Northern Illinois student, had a shotgun and two handguns when he stepped onto the lecturer's stage near the end of an afternoon geology class and began shooting, witnesses said. Terrified and bleeding, students fled the hall before the gunman shot himself on the stage.

Police did not identify the gunman or a motive in the latest in a series of shootings at U.S. colleges and high schools.

Virginia Tech, a university in Blacksburg, Virginia, became the site of the deadliest shooting rampage in modern U.S. history in April when a gunman killed 32 people and himself.

The president of Northern Illinois University on Friday said the university had reviewed and improved its emergency response plans after the Virginia Tech shooting.

While universities traditionally have been "some of the most open institutions," he said on CNN, "events like this and Virginia Tech and others are forcing us to reconsider how we do things. I think that is unfortunate but necessary."

Peters said the gunman, whom he did not identify, was a sociology major at the university with a good academic record who went on to graduate work in 2007.

"Motive is the one thing that we're trying to pin down at this point. I really at this point have no sense of that. There is no note or threat that I know of," Peters told ABC's "Good Morning America."

The shooter "by all accounts that we can tell right now was a very good student that the professors thoughts well of," he said. "There is nothing in our system that he has had any counseling."