Craig Watson/The Beacon-News, via Associated Press

A student is led away from the scene of the shooting.

A gunman killed five students and wounded 16 others in a Northern Illinois University lecture hall on Thursday afternoon in DeKalb before killing himself, according to university and police officials.

John G. Peters, the president of Northern Illinois University, reported at a news conference that four of the dead were women and two were men. He said four died at the scene, including the gunman, and the other two died at the hospital. All the wounded and the dead were students, including the graduate student leading the ocean sciences class.

According to students in the class, a tall white skinny man dressed in black stepped out from behind a curtain on the stage of the lecture hall, said nothing, and opened fire with a shotgun.

He shot again and again, witnesses said, perhaps 20 times. Students in the large lecture hall, stunned, dropped to the floor.

More the New York Times.

Just another “gunfree zone”…

DEKALB, Ill. (AP) — Witnesses at Northern Illinois University say he was dressed in black and opened fire with a shotgun and two handguns.

When it was over, up to 18 people were injured, four critically, and police say the gunman was dead of a self-inflicted wound.

The gunman is said to be a student, but not at NIU. The campus is in DeKalb, about 65 miles west of Chicago.

The shooting happened at 3 p.m. in a geology class at a lecture hall near the center of the campus. Witnesses say the gunman stepped from being a screen and opened fire. Police say they have no motive.

A spokeswoman for a hospital says it received 17 victims, all with wounds from the shooting or flying debris. Another victim was airlifted to another hospital.