Students describe campus scene

DEKALB -- Lauren Miller was leaving a meeting with her adviser at Northern Illinois University’s Douglas Hall when she stepped into what she could only describe as a surreal scene Thursday.

Firetrucks, ambulances and police cars surrounded the campus where a gunman opened fire just after 3 p.m.

"It was complete chaos," said Miller, a sophomore from Aurora. "It’s not a place where anyone wants to be right now."

The shooting spree that left five students and the gunman dead erupted at Cole Hall, in a lecture hall that seats 500 people where students take general courses as freshmen and sophomores. It’s a hall where Joel Ream, of Elburn, takes geology class three times a week — but never on Thursdays.

"It is pretty crazy because I sit pretty close to the (back) door, and I’m glad I wasn’t there," he said.

Ream and dozens of NIU students from the Fox Valley spoke of a day that was terrifying, eerie and hard to fathom.

"It’s just dead. It’s just gloomy," Miller said, two hours after the shooting.

"I’m looking out the window right now and I see two people hugging each other," she said. "It’s a sad time."

Holed up in dorm rooms and classrooms for an hour right after 3 p.m., students frantically tried to piece together the details of the shooting.

Via text messages, phone calls or the Internet, news spread about the shooting. Many students from the Fox Valley area said they were in class when the university or friends alerted them electronically about a shooting. Doors locked immediately.

Kay Gonzales, 25, of Aurora, stayed put in her art class. During the hourlong lockdown, the rumors, scenarios and first accounts swarmed.

"We just kept updating Web sites, and classmates were calling and texting each other," the visual communications major said. "We were just really freaked out by the thing."

James Reid, an NIU student from Geneva, said he stayed in the comfort of his dorm room.

"I was sitting in the lounge (at the dorm) when someone came in and said there had been a shooting," he said. "One girl on our floor, she was just walking back from Cole Hall when it happened. She’s pretty catatonic right now."

Many students said cell phones were jammed, and they were unable to dial out or receive calls from friends and parents. But even students who weren’t on campus, like Dan Koss of Aurora, found out about the shooting almost instantly.

"I’m amazed at the power of the Internet to carry news like this," he said. "I found out about the shooting via IM (instant message), after which I checked several Web sites to confirm, and all of them had the shooting up minutes after I first heard of it. Many of my non-student friends heard about it before I did.

After the shooting, freshman Robby Brasfield, of Elburn, walked past Cole Hall to get to his dorm amid a chaotic scene of yellow tape, emergency vehicles, police cars and sirens.

When he got to his dorm, students had to take off their coats to be checked for guns. NIU officials canceled classes Thursday, and students were told to go home if possible.

Junior Megan Nelson, of Aurora, couldn’t picture life returning to normal at the rural campus.

"Just to go to a class that you probably go every Tuesday and Thursday and to have something like that happen, I just can’t imagine," she said. "It could have easily been me or anybody that’s close to me.

"I have a class in that hall (Cole). I could never imagine going back in that hall."