NIU Gunman an Authority on Prison Systems
Updated: The gunman who opened fire during a lecture at Northern Illinois University yesterday was an authority on corrections with an interest in “political violence and peace,” according to a paper he helped write.
Authorities have identified the man who shot and killed five people before turning the gun on himself as Steve Kazmierczak, according to reports in the Chicago Tribune and the Daily Herald. He was a student at NIU through spring 2007 and had served as vice president of the Academic Criminal Justice Association chapter at the school. He was currently a graduate student in sociology at the University of Illinois.
Earlier reports today said Kazmierczak had killed six people besides himself, but a coroner said the number was incorrect and the gunman had killed five people. Campus police said Kazmierczak had stopped taking medication two weeks ago “and became somewhat erratic,” the Chicago Tribune reports in an updated story.
Kazmierczak had co-written a paper on self-inflicted injury in prison and was working on a paper on the role of religion in the formation of early prisons in the United States. The introduction to the paper on self-inflicted injury says Kazmierczak has interests in “corrections, political violence, and peace and social justice.”
Updated at 12:13 p.m. to correct the number of victims.
