Since the 2008 shooting, FBI statistics show active shootings across the U.S. have increased sharply — especially in the last few years.
Patrick Korellis, a senior at the time of the Northern Illinois University shooting on Feb. 14, 2008, said he remembers that day vividly.
“It will always be apart of me, and it’s always in my head,” Korellis recalled. “It does get easier as time goes on, but that scar is there forever.”
On that day, Patrick was one of 120 students taking an oceanography class at Cole Hall auditorium. With only 15 minutes left in class, a stage door was kicked in and shooting began.
“In my head I’m like is this some kind of joke? What is going on?” Korellis said. “After three, four, shots, I realized wow, this is an actual school shooting. I got under my desk and hid there.”
When the gunman reloaded, Korellis ran for an exit door. “I felt something hit me in the back of my head and I was bleeding. So, I was holding my head and he shot again and again,” Patrick remembered.
Paramedics rushed him to the hospital. He still has shotgun pellets lodged in his skull 15 years later.
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“The doctor said I was a few millimeters away from impacting any major nerve damage, so I got lucky with that,” said Korellis.
Five students—Gayle Dubowski, Ryanne Mace, Catalina Gracia, Julianna Gehant and Daniel Parmenter—died in the shooting and more than a dozen others were wounded.
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NBC 5 Investigates found that a FEMA report issued after the shooting determined NIU police arrived in less than a minute after the first 911 call — by then the gunman had already ended his own life.
Korellis has learned to cope with surviving the shooting by talking with other victims.
“Talking about it helps because you just get your feelings out there with people that have been through the same thing as you,” he said. “You just don’t hold it in.”
Officers who responded to the classroom also found “about a half dozen or more students who were sitting in their seats in shock,” according to a report issued by NIU after the shooting.
“I remember I froze when it happened. When I was hiding, I was frozen,” the former student recalled, saying he understands why some of his classmates were frozen in shock during and after the shooting.
“The gunshots keep going and going. You’re just like ‘what do I do? What do I do?’ Things were flashing in front of my face, my family, my life," he said.
Since that 2008 shooting, FBI statistics show active shootings across the U.S. have increased sharply — especially in the last few years.
From 2019 to 2020, there was a 33% increase in active shooter incidents followed by a 52.5% increase from 2020 to 2021. After the NIU shooting, survivors heard from students at Virginia Tech who had just gone through their own school shooting the year before.
“That really resonated with me, is having that support group, people who have been through what you did,” Korellis said.
Ever since, Patrick reaches out to new victims to help them cope as mass shootings happen across the U.S.
“I just wish something could be done. I don’t want to keep having to keeping talking to these victims over and over again. Watch these numbers grow. I want the numbers to stop and everyone not to ever experience that,” he said.
