Hundreds Grieve at NIU Victim's Funeral

Groggy from stomach surgery and with a tube down her throat, Lauren Debrauwere still remembers how she was shot twice as she sat in Northern Illinois University auditorium last week.

Debrauwere, 19, told her family she never had a chance to run on Thursday when a stranger walked onto the stage and opened fire, killing five of her classmates _ including her boyfriend sitting next to her _ and injuring nearly 20 more before turning a gun on himself.

She remembers everything, her father, Mark Debrauwere, said Monday, the day families started laying the slain students to rest.

He said his daughter didn't know Steven Kazmierczak, and when he appeared on stage minutes before class was to end, she assumed he was there to make an announcement.

Then from somewhere behind him or underneath his clothing, he pulled out a shotgun. "He tried to shoot the instructor, who ducked behind the podium," Debrauwere said his daughter told him. Then, he said, Kazmierczak pointed the shotgun at the students sitting in front of him in the large lecture hall and pulled the trigger.

Lauren Debrauwere was sitting near the front of the class when the gunman fired a handgun at her boyfriend, Dan Parmenter, then shot her twice _ once in the hip and again in the abdomen _ then shot a girl sitting next to her.

"It was almost like he went down a line," Mark Debrauwere said.

On Monday, a large bouquet of flowers sat next to Parmenter's casket, along with a card bearing the message, "We will all remember your son Dan as a wonderful person." Photographs of Parmenter as a child and Boy Scout and as a young man skiing and playing volleyball were placed nearby.

Many of Parmenter's Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity brothers _ wearing ribbons in remembrance of the 20-year-old sophomore _ visited Hursen Funeral Home in Hillside.

Earlier Monday, mourners also gathered at Our Lady of the Mount Church to pay their last respects to Catalina Garcia, who was remembered as a "daughter of Cicero" by city officials in this heavily Hispanic suburb.

"She chose the hard path to pursue university education," NIU President John Peters said at the 20-year-old's funeral. Garcia, the youngest of four children in a family that had immigrated to the United States from Guadalajara, Mexico, was studying to become a teacher.

"She had goals and dreams. She inspired us all and should inspire young people of our community," Peters said.

A mariachi band played hymns during the Spanish Mass that attracted hundreds of mourners, who filled the pews, and spilled out into hallways and a foyer.

They saw photographs of Garcia, arranged to spell "Cati," her nickname. They saw Garcia's body, dressed in a pink ballgown-style dress and jeweled tiara inside a pale pink casket. And because they knew pink was her favorite color, many mourners themselves wore their own pink ribbons, ties and hair bands.

Mark Debrauwere said his daughter was conscious when she arrived at the hospital.

"She knew what had happened. She just said her stomach hurt, 'Please make it stop,'" Mark Debrauwere said.

Doctors found one bullet had exited her buttocks and the other had traveled up her body and lodged above her left breast, narrowly missing her heart, her father said.

She also knew something else.

"She kept asking us about Dan and we lied to her for a while but she knew (he'd been killed)," he said. "She saw it. She definitely had seen what happened."

Debrauwere said his daughter, who was later airlifted to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, is expected to make a full recovery and may be released from the hospital soon.

"How long the mental side of it (will take), I don't know," he said.

Wind chills below zero didn't keep about 300 people from attending a candlelight vigil at the University of Illinois, where Kazmierczak was a graduate student in the School of Social Work.

Illinois Chancellor Richard Herman urged those gathered to honor the students killed at NIU by living with compassion and kindness.

"The candles that you hold tonight will burn out soon," Herman said. "But the lasting flame in your hearts, the love that this troubled world so desperately needs, must burn forever."

Wynne Korr, the dean of the social work school, said her students mourn Kazmierczak's loss, too, calling him "a classmate and a friend."

In Blacksburg, Va., more than 1,000 people gathered Monday for a candlelight vigil on the Virginia Tech campus. That school was rocked last April when a student killed 32 people before killing himself.

In NIU's hometown of DeKalb, Samantha Dehner, who was shot twice during the attack, was released from Kishwaukee Community Hospital.

Dehner, 20, underwent a 2-hour surgery Friday to repair a shattered bone in her arm. She attended part of a Monday news conference with her doctors, but didn't speak and began to cry before being wheeled from the room.

Dehner's physicians said they're unsure whether she'll ever regain full use of her right arm and elbow.

"It's going to be a long recovery period of months to years," said orthopedic surgeon Rajeev Jain. "She's young. She's healthy. That gives her the best chance."

Dehner's family said the sophomore from Carol Stream had been friends with Gayle Dubowski, who was killed in the attack, since fourth grade and was close friends with at least one other wounded student.

"We do consider ourselves lucky that we're able to take ours home," said her father, Robert Dehner, who choked up as he described the outpouring of community support.

He said his daughter would return to NIU in the fall and move into her sorority house, Sigma Kappa.

"She's a tough kid. She'll make it," he said. "She says, 'You know dad. I was shot, I think I deserve a car.'"

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Associated Press writers Sophia Tareen in Cicero and Ashley M. Heher in DeKalb and David Mercer in Urbana contributed to this report.