$500,000 bond set for 22-year-old in NIU shooting

A DeKalb County judge on Saturday set bond at $500,000 for 22-year-old Zach Isaacman, the Northern Illinois University student accused of shooting and injuring another student Friday near a residence hall on campus.

The judge appointed a public defender for Isaacman, a former Buffalo Grove resident who attended Buffalo Grove High School. Isaacman said he was a junior at NIU, unemployed and lived at an off-campus fraternity. He faces felony weapon and battery charges.

School officials say the shooting was an isolated incident, and that it occurred after an early-morning argument between Isaacman and 24-year-old Pingree Grove resident Brian Mulder. Mulder was shot in the leg.

On Saturday, Mulder said he was feeling good but expected to remain at OSF St. Anthony Medical Center in Rockford until Sunday.

"They want to make sure my leg doesn't get infected," he said. "I just tried walking on it, and it went well, though there's still some pain."

On Friday, Mulder told the Daily Herald that the shooting occurred after he noticed a man walking behind a woman headed into the Stevenson North residence hall, where Mulder also lived. The man began pounding on the doors of the dorm, and Mulder told him to go home.

"There wasn't any 'altercation,'" Mulder said Saturday. "We didn't argue. I just told him to leave, and he shot me."

Mulder said he'd never seen the man before, and he wasn't sure who the woman was that the man was following.

School officials say police apprehended Isaacman shortly after 3:30 a.m. Friday, just a few minutes after the shooting. He's been charged with aggravated battery with a firearm, aggravated battery and unlawful use of a weapon.

DeKalb First Assistant State's Attorney Bill Engerman said bond was set at $500,000 because Isaacman was found with both a gun and two "magazines" containing extra ammunition, according to the police synopsis of the shooting.

"He has access to weapons and didn't hesitate to use them. The (bond) was appropriate," Engerman said.

The shooting rattled the NIU campus that just a few days earlier had marked the two-year anniversary of a campus shooting rampage that left five students dead before the gunman killed himself.

Meanwhile, Isaacman's former family home in Buffalo Grove was foreclosed on last year.

The home was for sale last year, but did not sell, and because it was bought with a loan from the Federal Housing Administration, the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development foreclosed on it around the holiday season, Century 21 agent Michael Kurgan said Saturday.

He said firefighters were called out to turn off the water at the house because water was pouring out of a pipe there around the time of the foreclosure.

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<li><a href="/story/?id=360432">NIU student shot; suburban native charged <span class="date">[02/19/10]</span></a></li>

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