Source: The Daily Telegraph

Steven Kazmierczak, at 27, looked like an average schoolboy - except that his arms were covered with disturbing images, including a doll from the horror movie Saw. Professors and students knew him as a bright, helpful scholar, but his past included a stint in a mental health centre. Kazmierczak allegedly had three tattoos done in recent months - one a skull being stabbed with a knife and another of the Saw character.

While searching for a motive for the Valentine’s Day attack, authorities questioned family and friends and tried to determine whether he had recently broken up with his longtime girlfriend. One person who knew the couple, who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity, said the couple’s relationship was on-again, off-again and “really rocky”. Kazmierczak was controlling, she said. “He was abusive, had a temper,” she said. “He didn’t actually hit her; he would push her around.”

It has also been revealed that the student was ‘outstanding, but erratic’. He also had a history of mental illness and had become erratic in the past two weeks after he stopped taking his medication, said university Police Chief Donald Grady. A former employee at a Chicago psychiatric treatment centre said Kazmierczak had been placed there after high school by his parents. He used to cut himself and had resisted taking his medications, she said.

Kazmierczak spent more than a year at the Thresholds-Mary Hill House in the late 1990s, former house manager Louise Gbadamashi told The Associated Press. His parents placed him there after high school because he had become “unruly” at home, she said. He also had a short-lived stint as a prison guard that ended abruptly when he did not show up for work. He was in the Army for about six months in 2001-02, but he told a friend he had gotten a psychological discharge.

On February 9, Kazmierczak walked into a Champaign gun store and picked up two guns - a Remington shotgun and a Glock 9mm handgun. He bought the two other handguns at the same shop - a Hi-Point .380 on December 30 and a Sig Sauer on August 6. All four guns were bought legally from a federally licensed firearms dealer, said Thomas Ahern, a spokesman for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. At least one criminal background check was performed - Kazmierczak had no criminal record. Kazmierczak had a state police-issued FOID, a firearms owners identification card, which is required in Illinois to own a gun, authorities said. Such cards are rarely issued to those with recent mental health problems.

NIU President John Peters said Kazmierczak compiled “a very good academic record, no record of trouble” at the 25,000-student campus in DeKalb. He won at least two awards and served as an officer in two student groups dedicated to promoting understanding of the criminal justice system.

Kazmierczak (pronounced kaz-MUR’-chek) grew up in the Chicago suburb of Elk Grove Village. He was a B student at Elk Grove High School, where school district spokeswoman Venetia Miles said he was active in the band and took Japanese before graduating in 1998. He was also in the chess club. On the door of Kazmierczak’s Champaign apartment, the building management posted a statement saying he had lived there since June 6, 2007. It called him a “a quiet resident who paid his rent, and did not otherwise come to the attention of the staff and management”, at the apartment complex.