Profiles of students
Nicole BernsJenna Broderick
Samantha Brunell
Dan Ciamprone
Patrick Korellis
Monique Caspillan and Lhee Santos
Desiree Smith
Kevin Sundstrom
Jillian Thomas
Lindsay Ullmann
Chris Werve
Profiles of victims
Gayle DubowskiCatalina Garcia
Julianna Gehant
Ryanne Mace
Daniel Parmenter
Glad he was with his brother in the classroom
By Kimberly Pohl | Daily Herald StaffKevin Sundstrom says he couldn't live with himself had he skipped class that day.
The lazy winter afternoon enticed him to stay home on Feb. 14, 2008, but something got the 22-year-old communications major from Rockford over to Cole Hall and into the fourth-row seat next to his younger brother, Paul.
For that, he's thankful.
"To not know what Paul went through, for him to be alone ... I just can't imagine how horrible that'd be," said Sundstrom, who has a tattoo of the Huskies logo and black memorial ribbon on his leg. "Survivor's guilt has been explained to us a million times, but it'd be something else entirely had I not been where I should have been."
Life is completely back to normal months after the Sundstroms and their roommate, Will Rezin, escaped the lecture hall unharmed. Still, the memories are haunting.
Paul, 19, remembers the instructor was wrapping up early to reward the class's performance on an earlier exam. That's when the stage door swung open.
"Most of the time it's someone who walked in the door by mistake. They see 200 kids staring back and run away," said Paul, now a sophomore.
Then the shooter - they never say his name - revealed his gun.
"No one said a single word until he fired the first shot," Kevin said. "Not one person got up to run. We just kind of looked at him."
There was a desperate push for the exit and most of the girls crawled up the aisle, the Sundstroms recall. Kevin saw the bottleneck of people and opted for speed over stealth.
"I said 'screw this' and ran," Kevin said. "I figured if he's going to hit me, then hit me while I'm running."
He emerged safely outside, but without his little brother, who tripped and fell. Kevin turned to go back, trying to fight through the frantic mob. Just then Paul appeared.
"He was probably only 10 seconds behind me, but it felt like an hour," Kevin said.
It wasn't until after they ran to the Holmes Student Center and flagged down a police officer that Paul saw he only had one shoe.
"I was standing in slush and suddenly realized my foot was freezing cold," he said. "It just shows me how your body takes over in a situation like that."
The brothers, graduates of Rockford Guilford High School, didn't return to campus for two weeks. They retreated to Rezin's secluded Wisconsin cabin with a small group of friends, riding snowmobiles and relaxing. They turned the open lake into a makeshift firing range.
"It was nothing we planned on but there was a collection of handguns and shotguns," Kevin said. "We each took a turn and called it quits."
"Actually, I took a few turns," interrupted Paul. "It might not make sense but we all agreed there was something about it that made us all feel better."
"It got the aggression out," Kevin added. "I wasn't sad. My feeling was anger. I felt rage. That was my body's reaction for some reason. Angry at him, mostly, for doing what he did and then taking the coward's way out by killing himself."
The Sundstroms didn't take to their only counseling session and haven't spoken much with their parents about the shootings. Instead, they've turned to each other for support and say they're "100 percent back to normal."
"We've had our four o'clock-in-the-morning cry sessions, but we've moved on," Kevin said. "We're not trying to be uncompassionate. There's not a day that I don't think about it five times. But we're not going to let what he did change the way we live."
