Academic

Because there is always a women to blame.

By Ann Bartow

From the Chicago Sun-Times article that is subtitled:

While investigators search for a motive behind Stephen Kazmierczak’s bloody rampage, questions are raised about a history of mental illness, medications and a recently failed relationship

Stephen Phillip Kazmierczak, the gunman who killed five students and himself at Northern Illinois University on Thursday, was dumped by his live-in girlfriend at the end of last year and had recently stopped taking his medications, friends and police said.

“He said all of a sudden she decided she wanted somebody else,” his godfather, Richard Grafer, told the Chicago Sun-Times on Friday. “She told him it was enough. She’d had it. She walked out on him.”

Still, Grafer said, Kazmierczak didn’t seem all that upset about the breakup when they spoke last month. In fact, Kazmierczak, who had transferred from NIU to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said he had a new girlfriend — at NIU.

But he stopped taking his meds and had been acting “somewhat erratic” in the last two weeks, police said. Sources said the medications may have been anti-depressants.

Kazmierczak left the Champaign apartment he still shared with his ex-girlfriend, and Wednesday night, the 27-year-old stayed at a DeKalb motel, a source said.

On Thursday, dressed in black, he parked his white Honda in an NIU lot, removed the keys from the ignition, left them in the car and locked the doors, a source said.

Carrying a shotgun in a guitar case and three handguns and ammo in his belt, he kicked open the door of a lecture hall in NIU’s Cole Hall and unleashed a rampage in the crowded geology class that left five students dead, more than 20 injured and dozens more scrambling for exits. He then shot himself dead on the lecture hall stage.

NIU Police Chief Don Grady said 48 shell casings and six spent shotgun shells were found in the hall. Kazmierczak reloaded his shotgun during his onslaught.

What hasn’t been found is a suicide note, leaving investigators to struggle with what could have set off a man considered intelligent and friendly. “We have found no notes at this time, so we have no idea what the motive was,” Grady said.

Investigators trying to piece together Kazmierczak’s final days sent a bomb squad to the DeKalb motel Friday, a source said. And his Champaign apartment was also searched. Police there found “what appeared to be a shotgun,” Champaign Police Chief R.T. Finney said. It was not loaded.

Authorities are looking to talk with a woman they think may have been Kazmierczak’s girlfriend. FBI spokesman Ross Rice said, ‘’I know that we’re looking for a roommate, but I don’t know whether it is a girlfriend or not.'’ …

I hope the women referenced are still alive, and understand that what happened is not their fault.

–Ann Bartow

Full post as published by Feminist Law Professors on February 16, 2008 (boomark / email).