A year has passed since Steven Kazmierczak, a former graduate student at the University, shot and killed five students at Northern Illinois University. DeKalb police officers, firefighters and hospital workers who were on the scene the day of the tragedy will always remember the atrocities that occurred.

“When we arrived on the scene, we were told the shooter was secure so we thought that meant he was in custody,” said Lt. Gary Spangler of the DeKalb Police Department. “But when we got there, I saw his body.” Spangler arrived at Cole Hall, where the shooting took place, just after he heard his radio say that some shots were fired. He was on the scene within five minutes of the call.

“I felt the power of the shock and the awe of the initial student response,” Spangler said.

From just after the shooting until late at night, Spangler, along with officials from the campus police department, worked together to keep order among students. Throughout the day, Spangler conducted interviews with students to try and get the best description possible of the shooter.

Spangler said he stayed later than most of the other emergency workers because his department was in charge of Kazmierczak’s investigation.

“We wanted to know everything we could about this guy,” Spangler said

“We wanted to help determine why he did it, if anyone helped him, and how this could have been prevented,” said Spangler, whose department was in charge of Kazmierczak’s investigation.

But Don Grady, chief of the NIU Police Department, said preventing the shooting would have been impossible. However, his department is always working to make sure campus is as safe as possible.

“If a person is willing to die in order to harm others, you’re not going to be likely to stop them,” Grady said,

Spangler added that although the situation was over by the time he arrived, he still wanted to find out as much as he could about the shooter through talking to his teachers, friends, and girlfriend. “We had to do our homework to make sure he was the only shooter,” Spangler said. “When we found out he was from Champaign, we did a search warrant at his apartment.” Spangler added that although Kazmierczak shot himself, the situation was still “terrifying and intense for everyone.”

Spangler said he also worked with other emergency workers such as the fire department, but that communication between the many different departments was difficult to maintain.

“It was very chaotic for the first few hours because there were so many law enforcement agencies there,” Spangler said

Eric Hicks, captain of the DeKalb Fire Department, said he and his crew were on their way back to the station from helping people on another call when suddenly, their radio told them to report to campus immediately.

Luckily, Hicks’s crew was only two blocks away from Cole Hall when they heard about the shooting. When Hicks arrived, he stayed in an area near the hall until the police dismissed him.

Hicks’s responsibilities were to check for injuries, transport people to the hospital, and assist the ambulances as they picked up patients.

While inspecting the injured, Hicks said he saw the two students who died on the scene shortly after being struck by Kazmierczak’s bullets.

“It makes you think about life and how short it can be,” Hicks said.

The days following Feb. 14 were hectic, difficult and busy with the ongoing investigations, he said.

“We had to make sure everyone in our department was okay,” Hicks said. “Everyone was affected by this.”

To this day, Spangler said he is still shocked that something like this could happen in his own neighborhood.

“I thought, ‘it’s never gonna happen here,'” Spangler said. “And then it happened here.”