Steven Kazmierczak On Three Medications, Including Prozac

In her [Jessica Baty] second conversation with CNN, on Tuesday, Baty said [Steven] Kazmierczak began seeing the psychiatrist shortly after they transferred from NIU to the University of Illinois in Champaign in June 2007.

A psychiatrist not familiar with the details of the case said the three-drug combination was not necessarily either unusual or dangerous.

"It's not terribly unusual to prescribe all three," said Dr. Nada Stotland, professor of psychiatry at Rush Medical College in Chicago and president-elect of the American Psychiatric Association.

Xanax typically has a sedating, calming effect on users, she said.

"If you take a lot of that class of medication, you can be sort of like somebody who is drunk, out of it, but not violent," she said.

A person who had stopped taking it might feel anxious and edgy, she said.

And Ambien is commonly prescribed to overcome sleeping difficulties sometimes attributed to Prozac, she said.

Baty also said that Kazmierczak had been on the computer recently, but she did not know what he was doing and did not ask.

"He was being secretive with his computer," Baty said. "When he would sit on the couch with his laptop he would turn it away from me so I couldn't see what he was looking at."

Steven Kazmierczak Sent Baty A Good-Bye Package on Valentine's Day

"The person I knew was not the one who went into Cole Hall and did that," Baty told CNN. "He was anything but a monster. He was probably the ... nicest, (most) caring person ever."

The day of the shooting or the day after, Baty received a package from Kazmierczak containing two textbooks, a cell phone and what she characterized as a "goodbye note."

"You've done so much for me," the note said, according to Baty. "You will make an excellent psychologist and social worker someday."

Another package contained a gun holster and ammunition. She confirmed that he had stopped taking an antidepressant about three weeks ago because "it made him feel like a zombie," but she denied that his recent behavior was unusual.

Anything But Erratic, Says Jessica Baty of Her Boyfriend, Steven Kazmierczak

CNN reports:

The girlfriend of the gunman who killed five people and then himself at Northern Illinois University last Thursday told CNN that there was "no indication he was planning something."

Jessica Baty said her boyfriend, Steve Kazmierczak, gave no warning of the terror he planned to unleash at NIU.

"He wasn't erratic. He wasn't delusional. He was Steve; he was normal," Jessica Baty tearfully said in an exclusive interview Sunday.

Baty, 28, had been dating and living with Steven Kazmierczak for two years.

"He was a worrier," she said. He once told her he had "obsessive-compulsive tendencies" and that his parents committed him as a teen to a group home because he was "unruly" and used to cut himself.

He had been seeing a psychiatrist, Baty said, and was taking an anti-depressant to treat depression. But Kazmierczak had stopped taking the medication three weeks ago, "because it made him feel like a zombie," she said.

"He wasn't acting erratic," she said. "He was just a little quicker to get annoyed."

She knew he had purchased at least two guns. He told her they were for home protection.

On Valentine's Day, Baty was in class at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign where she and Kazmierczak were graduate students studying criminal justice. The students began to talk about a mass shooting taking place at Baty and Kazmierczak's alma mater, NIU in DeKalb.

She didn't think much of it, and her mind drifted to where her boyfriend told her he would be that day -- with his godfather in another town in Illinois.

Contradictory Views of Steve Kazmierczak

What people initially told police about the Northern Illinois University shooter — a portrait of a happy, stable young man who was a bright, helpful scholar — didn't add up.

Now investigators searching for what triggered Thursday's bloody attack, in which five students were killed and several injured before Steven Phillip Kazmierczak committed suicide, are finding some disturbing details.

He had spent time in a mental health center, had disturbing tattoos covering his arms and had developed a recent interest in guns.

Quick Response From Authorities at NIU Shooting: Only 90 Seconds

MSNBC reports,

Steven Kazmierczak, a 27-year-old NIU (Northern Illinois University) graduate, opened fire Thursday afternoon in a lecture hall, killing five students and injuring more than a dozen others in a rapid-fire assault that lasted just a few minutes. He committed suicide on the stage.

Authorities responded quickly; the first 10 police officers were on the scene in 90 seconds. NIU launched its emergency alert system — a carefully rehearsed plan developed after Virginia Tech — sending out e-mails and messages on Web sites to notify students that a possible gunman was on campus and they needed to find a safe area.

We should be proud that our police officers responded in such a timely manner, in only 90 seconds. If Mr. Kazmierczak had not committed suicide immediately, he may have tried to go into other buildings on campus to shoot other students and professors. The police response would have prevented this additional tragedy. We should be relieved that authorities responded so quickly.

Young Murderers