The shooter at NIU (Northern Illinois University) has been identified as 27-year old Steven Kazmierczak, a former sociology graduate student at the university. He left NIU and joined the School of Social Work at the University of Illinois.

Including his own suicide, six lives have been lost, and twenty-two have been wounded. (The earlier reports that the shooter and six victims died are not accurate.)

No reports yet as to why he acted in this way. He had been a bright student. He received the dean’s award from NIU for his work. He had written on the prison system in the U.S. and he was the vice president of the NIU Academic Criminal Justice Association. All of this seems incongruent with the killing spree that he engaged in.