On Thursday, February 14, a gunman opened fire on a geology class of 160 students at Northern Illinois University. The gunman shot twenty-one people before killing himself. Five people, plus the gunman, were killed.

According to students in the classroom, the killer burst into the room from a side door, drew a shotgun, and started firing on the first couple of rows. Over fifty shots were fired from four weapons.

The gunman was later identified as Steven Kazmierczak, a former student of NIU. While Kazmierczak was an undergraduate at NIU, he was an "outstanding student" as well as an award-winning sociology student and a leader of a criminal justice group. However, authorities said that Kazmierczak had recently stopped taking his medication and had become erratic in the past couple of weeks. 

Police later recovered an additional weapon from his apartment. Kazmierczak had a valid, state-required firearm identification card and thus had no problem purchasing the weapons. The authorities have found no motive in the shooting.

Northern Illinois University had revised their emergency procedures after the Virginia Tech massacre last April. The Northern Illinois campus will be closed until further notice. Numerous memorials and websites have been set up in the memory of the five slain victims.