A little information about gunman at NIU
By on
February 15th, 2008
The identity of the gunman has been defined by the police but have not been released yet. However, according to the authorities, the shooter was a graduate student at NIU in the spring of 2007. Currently he was not student at the school of more than 25,000 that rises from cornfields and subdivisions 65 miles west of downtown Chicago.
NIU President John G. Peters said the man had been enrolled as a sociology graduate student at NIU but left school last spring. Peters said the gunman had no police record.
Just two years ago, Northern Illinois University honored the man identified as the shooter in Thursday’s attacks with a dean’s award for his sociology work.
The gunman had established himself as an authority on prison systems, having co-authored a manuscript on self-injury in prison and the role of religion in the formation of early prisons in the United States. Both papers were written under the guidance of Jim Thomas, a professor emeritus at NIU and a nationally renowned criminal-justice expert.
Two law enforcement sources identified the gunman as a current graduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The Tribune is not naming the gunman because police have not officially completed the identification of his body.
The gunman also served as vice president of the Academic Criminal Justice Association chapter at NIU.
The student group aims to educate the DeKalb community “about and promote knowledge and understanding of all areas of the criminal justice system, especially corrections and juvenile justice,” according to its Web site.
The organization’s current president worked on a paper with the shooter and Thomas dealing with self-injury in prison.
School officials say the gunman was enrolled at NIU in Spring 2007, but left to attend graduate school at another state university. According to the U. of I., the shooter was a graduate student in the school of social work.
Late Thursday, sources confirmed that they have tentatively identified the shooter as a 27-year-old graduate student in social work at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
A law-enforcement source said the man was found with a U. of I. identification card in his pocket, but the identification has not been confirmed.
The gunman grew up in Elk Grove Village, but records show his parents moved to Florida shortly before his mother’s death in 2004.
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