Shooter: 'Nobody comes to mind'

He crept into the lecture hall and popped out from behind a curtain, his shotgun pointing at a sea of college students taking notes.

He didn't say why.

He just started shooting.

He wore a black cap, jacket and dark pants. He was tall, skinny, white and young.

He was enrolled last spring at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb as a graduate student of sociology.

The 27-year-old transferred last fall to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to study social work, according to ABC 7 Chicago's Chuck Goudie.

And he had no criminal history.

As of late last night, though, that is just about all the public could find out about the man who shot five students to death, wounded 16 and then killed himself in Cole Hall on Valentine's Day afternoon.

The shooter remained as mysterious to the public as any possible reasoning for such violence.

Authorities said late Thursday that they still had no idea why the man went to the classroom armed with a shotgun and two handguns to slaughter students on his former campus.

"We know none of that," NIU President John Peters said. "We have no motive at this time."

If students or professors from the sociology department knew who the killer was, they weren't saying or venturing to guess. Sociology graduate students who could be reached Thursday declined to talk to the press.

"I'm baffled," sociology department chair Kay Forest said. "Nobody comes to mind."