NIU

If you pray, this is a good time to do it.

CNN waivers between 2 and 3 confirmed dead...up to 18 shot...a student was interviewed by phone, and apparently they don't have a campus alert system. After VaTech, my U got one, and it is a little over-efficient, but that's better than inefficient.

Scary.

NIU is only a couple hours away, so we play them frequently in sports. Plus it's a U that I grew up fairly close to, and have always had an affinity for...so this one hits a little closer to home than usual.

UPDATE 4:55: As happens, the numbers keep changing...here is a link to the local hospital, saying they've gotten 13 patients.

UPDATE 5:11: CNN reporting 17 injured, 3 dead. NIU released confirmation that the killer suicided, holding a press conference at 5:30.

UPDATE 5:30: The hospital has seen 17 injuries, no fatalities, 3 are critical--2 of those transferred out for trauma care.

UPDATE 5:51: The only fatality at this time appears to be the gunman. The reporters asking questions at the press conference are dumbasses. This happened 2 1/2 hours ago, and they want to know if the professor had any run-ins with the shooter, if anyone failed the class, etc. Give law enforcement a chance, jeez. They're saying the gunman wasn't a student, and I think that if it was a random member of the public wandering onto campus, that makes it worse somehow.

UPDATE 6:21: Trib says 5 dead.

UPDATE 7:57am: Now 7 total dead, including the gunman. Someone IRL asked why I felt compelled to update this so many times, and all I can say is that had I graduated from high school in Illinois, NIU probably would have been my next stop on the education train. A lot of the kids from my Illinois school ended up there, and I always kind of assumed it would be my college before I was uprooted to another state. So even though nobody is checking my blog for breaking news...I just felt, well, compelled to update it anyway.

UPDATE 11:00am: 6 dead, including the gunman.