"We walk in hope, we pray for healing," says one message outside the Lutheran Campus Ministry Center. The Rev Diane Schmidt Dard, the Lutheran campus pastor, has been ministering with families and friends since Thursday's campus shooting.
Dard stood with families of those wounded and killed at Kishwaukee Community Hospital, according to the ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) News Service.
Six large crosses have been set up outside the Lutheran center, inviting people to write messages expressing their grief and to join evening "remembrance prayers" everyday, Dard told the news service.
"The crosses have become a huge witness to this community," she said.
On Thursday at around 3pm, Steven Kazmierczak, who was armed with three handguns and a pump-action shotgun, opened fire on a geology class. He had stepped out from behind a screen on stage at the lecture hall and killed five students before turning the gun on himself.
Kazmierczak had been a graduate student in sociology at Northern Illinois as recently as spring 2007. He was described as a successful student by his professors and also received a dean's award as an undergraduate at the university.
He was not an outcast, reports say.
