Hundreds mourn at makeshift memorial to NIU shooting victims

~ Hundreds came to express their sorrow and pay their respects

DEKALB, Ill. -- Mourners stood in the rain, staring at five white crosses on a small hill before placing flowers in the snow in front of each one.

The visitors held markers for long minutes in front of 16-foot-long remembrance boards crammed with messages, adding their own words, knowing they do not adequately reflect their grief.

And a few kneeled in front of crime scene tape strung outside a Northern Illinois University lecture hall where a young man gunned down five students before turning the gun on himself.

Alongside the five crosses bearing the names of the slain students was a sixth -- draped in a black T-shirt and representing the gunman.

For several hours Sunday, in small groups or by themselves, hundreds came to express their sorrow and pay their respects.

Some were students who couldn't bring themselves to leave the campus, even though there have not been classes since Thursday afternoon's attack and there won't be for another week. Others once went here and just had to come back and still more just know the school as a neighbor in their community.

"I'm trying to understand," said Shelly Zabielski, a 1978 graduate who sat in a wheelchair before the crosses. "This is what you know. This is your place ... and I needed to come out here to see this place, to try to grip what happened better."

She left, though, not understanding any better than when she arrived.

Nobody understood

And from the words on the message boards, the crosses and the nearby lecture hall where Steven Kazmierczak ended five lives and his own, apparently without telling anyone why, nobody understood.

"God, please bring our university together," pleaded one. "I'm sorry. I'm praying," read another.

Many who wrote messages made their way past John Moluf. A 1981 graduate of NIU who now works there as an architectural draftsman, Moluf wanted to do something to help the people he knew would descend on this place.

"I think it helped a lot of them," said Moluf, motioning to the four large message boards he helped build a couple hundred yards away from the site of shooting rampage. "It's a release. It's talking to someone, talking to everyone."

College "is supposed to be an introduction to life," he said, shaking his head before bending over to pick up some of the markers and put them in a spot where easier to reach for those who wanted to add their thoughts.

Andrew Lamirand said the college is more than a place where he is earning a degree. It is intertwined with his family, including the two-year-old son he held as he read all the messages.

"I was telling my wife, it's my school. It's like my second home," said Lamirand, a 25-year-old physical education major. "It's almost like someone got shot in my house."

Around the corner, just staring at the crosses, Joe Healy had similar thoughts of this place where he has such good memories, where he felt so safe.

"I thought [of] DeKalb sort of as a sanctuary," said Healy, who graduated in 2004 and now lives in nearby Aurora. But what now keeps pushing its way into his head is what the students must have seen the moment Kazmierczak lifted a shotgun and pulled the trigger.

"The horror of being able to visualize what these students saw, it's troubling," he said.

For Zabielski, what is most troubling is the thought of what students at her alma mater have lost and may never recover.

"When these kids come back, they have to learn to trust the person next to them again," she said. "How do they do that?"