Kazmierczak Attempted to Impede Investigators

By Margaret Lyons in News on Feb 19, 2008 9:10PM

More disturbing details are emerging today about Steve Kazmierczak: Police are saying that he tried to cover his tracks before the shooting spree. He removed the hard drive from his computer and took the SIM card out of his phone. And apparently the account his girlfriend gave CNN yesterday doesn't match with what she told the police.

[NIU Police Chief] Grady said police still had hundreds of people to interview and toward the top of the list was Kazmierczak's former girlfriend, Jessica Baty, who in the CNN interview contradicted earlier statements to police that her former boyfriend had acted erratically after going off his medication.

"I suppose you could call that being uncooperative," Grady said.

But going off Prozac doesn't make someone a homicidal maniac. While lots of patients experience "discontinuation symptoms" when they stop taking Prozac (or any SSRI), those symptoms rarely include violent tendencies. According to the Trib, "while the source of Kazmierczak's state of mind remains a mystery, experts said it's unlikely that halting his Prozac therapy would have led directly to his shooting plot."

Memorial services for Catalina Garcia and Ryanne Mace, two of the victims, were held today, and the other three victims' services are tomorrow. Mace's father wrote about his loss on his Flickr page, and it's absolutely heartbreaking.