The gunman who went on a shooting spree at the Northern University Illinois was a top graduate student. He received the dean's award for his sociology work two years ago, and was considered an authority on prison systems. Apparently, before he died he was a graduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Seven people died at Northern University Illinois when the former student killed six of his colleagues then himself in a university lecture hall. The graduate student in sociology was dressed in a black trench coat and was wearing a ski mask and a stocking cap when he opened fire with a shotgun and two handguns from the stage of the lecture hall yesterday. Five including the gunman died on the spot and two more passed away at the hospital.

“This guy came in from behind where the professor was speaking and began shooting. He shot, emptied out the gun, and nonchalantly began reloading,” Paul Sundstrom, a student said in an interview posted on MSNBC.com. He also said that about 150 to 200 students were in the lecture room at the time.

Then the gunman shot himself on the stage after the brief rampage that sent terrified students screaming and running for the doors about 3 p.m.

“I ducked behind the seats and ran out the door. As I was running, I just kept waiting for something to hit me in the back. I didn’t know where to run, tried to decide where it’s safe to be, and there isn’t anywhere safe,” student Zach Seward told local Daily Chronicle newspaper.

The class in Cole Hall where the shooting took place had been an introductory offering, The New York Times reports. It appears that most of the 162 students registered for the course were freshmen or sophomores.

The gunman was vice president of the Academic Criminal Justice Association chapter at NIU while he was still attending the higher education institution. He worked on a paper with organization's current president and Jim Thomas, a professor emeritus at NIU and a nationally renowned criminal-justice expert.

The incident was the fourth at a U.S. school in just one week. On Feb. 8, a woman gunned down two students at Louisiana Technical College in Baton Rouge. On Monday, a 17-year-old gunman opened fire at a Memphis high school, critically injuring a fellow student during gym class. A day later, a 14-year-old junior high school student shot a classmate in the head in Oxnard, Calif.