Kazmierczak

DEKALB, Illinois (AP):

The man who carried out a deadly university campus shooting rampage had the look of a boyish graduate student - except that his arms were covered with disturbing images, including a doll from the horror movie Saw.

Professors and students knew 27-year-old Steven Kaz-mierczak as a bright, helpful scholar, but his past included a stint in a mental health centre.

Many saw him as happy and stable, but he had developed a recent interest in guns and was involved in a troubled - possibly abusive - on-again, off-again relationship.

What people initially told police about the Northern Illinois University shooter didn't add up, and now investigators are searching for answers to what triggered Thurs-day's bloody attack in which five students were killed and several more injured before Kazmierczak committed suicide.

While searching for a motive, authorities questioned family and friends and tried to determine whether he had recently broken up with his long-time girlfriend.

Tumultuous relationship

One person who knew the couple, who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity, said the couple's relationship was tumultuous 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."

Kazmierczak 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 medication, 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.

Gbadamashi couldn't remember any instances of him being violent, she said.

"He never wanted to identify with being mentally ill," she said. "That was part of the problem."

Jason Dunavan, a tattoo artist in Champaign, said he spent hours as recently as last month creating tattoos for Kazmierczak. His work included an image of the macabre doll from the horror movie Saw riding a tricycle through a pool of blood with images of several bleeding cuts in the background.

Dunavan said he was so proud of the tattoo that he enlarged a photo of it and placed it on a wall in his shop - a move he is now rethinking.

"I don't know if I still want that picture on my wall," said Dunavan, who also described Kazmierczak as timid and apologetic.

"He was really, really mousy."

This undated photo released by tattoo artist Jason Dunavan shows the right arm of NIU shooter Steven Kazmierczak with the a tattoo of a character from the movie 'The Saw'. It is one of three tattoos Kazmierczak got in the past five to six months. - AP Photos