p2pnet - rss feed: NIU killer was taking medication
p2pnet news | Crime:- Steven Kazmierczak, now identified as the man who shot and killed five people, and then himself, at Northern Illinois University, was a MySpace member.
The pic is a clip from the photo which appeared on his MySpace page.
MySpace forums carry re-runs of an Associated Press story which leads off:
“The man who gunned down five people at Northern Illinois University in a suicidal rampage became erratic after halting his medication and carried a shotgun to campus inside a guitar case, police said Friday.”
AP has campus police chief Donald Grady saying Kazmierczak had become, “somewhat erratic in the last couple of weeks”.
Interestingly, he wouldn’t name the drug Kazmierczak was taking, or give details.
Kazmierczak was dumped by his live-in girlfriend at the end of last year, according to the Chicago Sun-Times, which quotes his godfather, Richard Grafer, as saying, “She told him it was enough. She’d had it. She walked out on him.”
The people who died during the tragedy have been identified as Daniel Parmenter, 20, of Elmhurst; Catalina Garcia, 20, of Cicero; Ryanne Mace, 19, of Carpentersville; Julianna Gehant, 32, of the Mendota area, and Gayle Dubowski, 20, of Carol Stream, says the story.
Kazmierczak had won “several academic awards,” was vice president of a student government association and studied criminal justice as a grad student at NIU until last year, it says, adding:
“As a student, he studied mental health issues and worked for a time in a prison.”
In an earlier post, we wrongly said seven people had been murdered.
Also See:
Associated Press - NIU Gunman Stopped Taking Medication, February 15, 2007
Chicago Sun-Times - Gunman ’somewhat erratic’, February 16, 2007
wrongly - Valentine’s Day massacre at NIU, February 15, 2007
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February 16th, 2008 at 8:41 am
Why ‘interestingly?’
February 16th, 2008 at 8:57 am
It would be interesting to know precisely what drug it was, to investigate
the possibility of the drug being a factor in this.
Possibly a major factor.
There are drugs that carry this type of risk, this type of KNOWN risk.
Why are they still prescribed ?
count on this to continue to be hidden.
February 16th, 2008 at 10:03 am
^^ Right.
And just as interesting, was the maker able prevail on the media to deliberately keep its name out of the reports?
Cheers!
February 16th, 2008 at 10:22 am
@ Hippie - but he had stopped taking the drug
February 16th, 2008 at 10:32 am
^^ I’m not a doctor or a pharmacist, but might symptoms which led to him taking the drug in the first place have been amplified or exacerbated by withdrawal effects created when he stopped taking it?
February 16th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Jon,
^^ Yes, based on personal experience, this is quite possible. Or the level of the meds he was on before he stopped them was inadequate to control whatever symptoms he was experiencing, and going off the meds would have restored the full effect of the symptoms.
February 16th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
$5 says it was an SSRI. The toxic shock withdrawal effects are super-dangerous.
February 16th, 2008 at 9:15 pm
The pharmaceutical companies would probably sue the media if they revealed the drug.
February 17th, 2008 at 12:22 am
SSRIs are not habit-forming or addictive. If somebody is going off them they need to taper off gradually or they may experience a few unpleasant symptoms due to sudden termination of the drug.
February 18th, 2008 at 1:05 am
Maybe I’ve gone crazy and this is some kind of alternate dimension, but isn’t one of the qualities of addiction defined as “a few unpleasant symptoms due to sudden termination of the drug”?
February 18th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
No, not alternate dimension, I did not explain myself very clearly.
What I mean by addiction is that the initial effect (relief of symptoms) of taking the drug starts to diminish, and increasing quantities of the drug have to be taken to maintain the same level of relief. No SSRI is addictive in this sense, unlike street drugs like heroin or prescription drugs such as morphine.
If psychiatric drugs, which often affect mood, are suddenly stopped, mood swings are one possibility, as well as physical side effects such as “brain zaps” (see Effexor) may occur.
February 18th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
^^ Forgot to mention that I am not any kind of medical professional at all, but have tried many different psychiatric drugs over the last 15 years due to sensitivity to side effects. Different people will have different experiences with the same drug.