US campus gunman toll rises to six

Another person shot when a suicidal gunman opened fire at an American university has died, bringing the toll to six.

Investigators and school officials said they did not know why the man, a former student at Northern Illinois University, indiscriminately fired into a lecture hall crowd with a shotgun and two handguns before killing himself.

"We have no motive and I have no way of knowing what the motive was," University police chief Donald Grady said.

Witnesses said the gunman, dressed in black and wearing a stocking cap, emerged from behind a screen on the stage of 200-seat Cole Hall and opened fire just as the class was about to end around 3pm yesterday.

Student Allyse Jerome, 19, said the man burst through a stage door and pulled out a gun.

"Honestly, at first everyone thought it was a joke," she said. Everyone hit the floor, she said. Then she got up and ran, but tripped. She said she felt like "an open target."

"He could've decided to get me. I thought for sure he was gonna get me."

Lauren Carr said she was sitting in the third row when she saw the shooter walk through a door on the right-hand side of the stage, pointing a gun straight ahead.

"I personally army-crawled halfway up the aisle," said the 20-year-old. "I said I could get up and run or I could die here."

She said a student in front of her was bleeding, "but he just kept running."

"I heard this girl scream, 'Run, he's reloading the gun!"'

The shooter had been a graduate student in sociology at Northern Illinois as recently as spring 2007, but was not currently enrolled at the 25,000-student campus, University President John Peters said.

Authorities did not release the gunman's name, but Mr Peters said he had no record of police contact or an arrest record while attending Northern Illinois, which is about 65 miles west of Chicago.

The DeKalb County Coroner released the identities of the four victims who died in his county: Daniel Parmenter, 20, Catalina Garcia, 20, Ryanne Mace, 19, and Julianna Gehant, 32.

More than a hundred students cried and hugged as they gathered outside the Phi Kappa Alpha sorority house early this morning to remember those killed.

Daniel Parmenter's stepfather Robert Greer said: "I'm not angry. I'm just sad, and I know that right now what I need to do is comfort my wife."

The school was closed for one day during final exam week in December after campus police found threats, including racial slurs and references to shootings earlier in the year at Virginia Tech, scrawled on a bathroom wall in a dormitory.

Police decided that there was no imminent threat and the campus was reopened. Mr Peters said he knew of no connection between that incident and yesterday's attack.