WREX.com – Rockford’s News LeaderCole Hall survivors react to NIU's shooting report

Cole Hall survivors react to NIU's shooting report

By Marissa Alter

DEKALB (WREX) - NIU's release of a report detailing the 2008 Cole Hall shooting stirs up emotions on campus, especially for those students who lived through the attack. The Office of Support and Advocacy sent out an e-mail to all student who were in that lecture hall when Steven Kazmierczak stormed in, warning of the report's release.

"Just to get our minds ready," says Junior Samantha Brunell.

The e-mail advised students to take their time with the report, not to read it right before class, and to come into the office and speak to counselors if they need to. Brunell printed off the 300-plus pages right away.

"To me, it didn't really answer my questions. I just felt completely dissatisfied, like I waited two years for nothing almost, like I was almost better off not getting the report," Brunell states.

"I only read really the psychology aspect of it because I just wanted to know what was in his [Kazmierczak's] mind," says Harold Ng. "What makes him different from a lot of people who deal with the same things?"

For Ng, it was some insight into the man who put him in the hospital. Buck shot pellets hit Ng as he tried to escape the geology class.

Junior Grace Weidner was in row J, seat 13 that afternoon right next to Brunell. "It brought back a lot of memories. It kind of made me sad because there's something about seeing it on paper."

Weidner and Ng say they were satisfied with the report as a whole. "I'd always known how fast emergency personnel responded, but just seeing the minutes broken down--when they first got there, when the first victims were transferred to the hospital," Weidner says. "As a survivor, it was very impressive to see how they worked so hard to make sure everyone got the treatment and care they needed."

The three wonder if they'll every really have closure.

"I'm always going to have questions and the rate things are going I just think those are always going to be lingering in my mind," Brunell adds.

Weidner says the report gave her answers about the university's procedures and what happened in the aftermath, "but the kind of closure one would hope for, not really because you're always going to have live with the memories."

Ng recovered quickly physically from the attack. "But it's an ongoing process, you're never fully healed, but we're moving forward."