Feb 15, 2008 8:44 am US/Central
Student Newspaper Editor Describes NIU Shooting
Former Marine Adds The Shooting 'Sounded Like A Cannon'
DE KALB, Ill. (Naperville Sun) ―
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A victim is transported on a stretcher after a gunman opened fire at Northern Illinois University.
DeKalb Chronicle
His career as a professional journalist lies ahead of him, yet Ben Gross has already borne witness to the story of a lifetime.
Gross, 22, is a lifelong Naperville resident and 2004 graduate of Waubonsie Valley High School. He is sports editor of the Northern Star, the student-run newspaper of Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, where Gross is majoring in political science.
He and his fellow editors, reporters and photographers were in the newspaper's offices about 3:10 p.m. Thursday when word reached them of the mind-boggling madness playing out half a mile away in Cole Hall, where a former graduate student armed with three guns would mortally wound five people and injure 16 others before turning one of the weapons on himself.
"By the time we had grabbed cameras and everything and gotten out there, it was about 3:25," Gross said during a telephone interview. "Police had already barricaded the whole area off."
"At that point, it seemed like the shooter had already been taken down," Gross said. "There were four people on the ground receiving medical attention, and another - a girl who had been shot in the hand - wasn't getting any attention, but seemed to be quite upset.
"Another man who had been shot fled to the university bookstore" about 100 yards away, Gross said. "He looked like he'd been sprayed with shrapnel in the upper torso and chest."
During an eight-year stint with the U.S. Marine Corps, Bolingbrook resident Greg Morley never once saw shrapnel, much less the carnage about to envelop Cole Hall.
A graduate student in communications and a former freelance photographer for The Naperville Sun, Morley and five associates barricaded themselves for more than an hour in a subterranean photojournalism laboratory directly beneath the auditorium where the horror was unfolding.
Morley said he heard "a large explosion" about 3:15 p.m.
"God, it sounded like a ... cannon," Morley said Thursday evening by telephone. The explosion, in turn, was "followed by just a pause that was quickly followed by rapid fire from what was probably a semiautomatic handgun."
He and those with him heard "probably three dozen shots total," Morley said. Every blast was accompanied by a hair-raising soundtrack of "complete screaming, (of) desks being overturned and people running and stampeding," he said.
Morley and the others emerged from the shelter of the lab around 4:20 p.m. "By that time, I didn't see any hysteria or panic, just people reflecting and comforting each other," he said.
"It's just sickening. Even with my years in the service, it's a very sickening feeling."
The afternoon also proved harrowing for Naperville resident Natalie Smith, who as of 5:25 p.m. had not been able to make contact with her son, Alan Smith. The younger Smith is a Neuqua Valley High School graduate and member of the NIU football team.
"Some friends think he might have been at football practice," Natalie Smith told The Sun by telephone as another phone jangled frantically in the background.
Natalie Smith got the news she had hoped for during that telephone interview.
"We just got a text message from him, and he's OK," Smith said of her son. "He just texted a friend. Everything's OK."
Classes have been canceled today at NIU and all of its satellite campuses, including the one at 1120 E. Diehl Road.
"A lot of people are getting out of town," Gross said of his classmates. "It's an exodus."
Keith Hartenberger, a spokesman for Edward Hospital in Naperville, said a crisis counseling team from Edward-affiliated Linden Oaks Hospital stands ready to assist students on the DeKalb campus.
"They're trained in this, so if needed, they're ready to go," Hartenberger said.
By Bill Bird / Naperville Sun
Steve Brown, Kathy Cichon, Katie Foutz and Tim Waldorf contributed to this report.
(CBS 2, the Naperville Sun and the Aurora Beacon-News are news partners covering stories in the western suburbs. Send story tips to tips@cbs2chicago.com. (© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting, Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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