A gunman opened fire on the campus of Northern Illinois University (NIU) killing four students before killing himself today.  Twenty-two people were shot by the crazed gunman.

Four of the wounded were in critical condition, eight in stable condition; and six in fair to good condition, a hospital Web site said.

The shooting occurred shortly after 3 p.m. (4 p.m. ET) in Cole Hall as 15 minutes remained in a geology class on ocean sciences that had started at 2 p.m., University President John Peters said.

“It started and it stopped very quickly,” said Police Chief Donald Grady. The gunman, whose identity has not been revealed publicly, was not a student at the NIU campus in DeKalb, west of Chicago, but “may have been a student somewhere else.”

Our prayers and condolences go out to the victims and families of those shot.

NIU has an enrollment of 25,000 students and is about an hour away from Chicago.  The main campus is located in DeKalb, Illinois.  Those injured were treated at Kishwaukee Community Hospital.

These shootings are becoming way too common.  Just last week a female student opened fire at a tech college in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.