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Tragedy all too real

Posted: Friday, February 15, 2008 12:08 PM

By Kevin Tibbles, NBC News Correspondent

DEKALB, Ill. –  I arrived on the campus of Northern Illinois University in the dark. It wasn't until sunup, a little before 7 a.m. this morning, as the flags fluttered at half-staff and clanged against their poles, that I saw them.

And the drops of blood. The sidewalks here are spattered with them, clearly left by injured students fleeing the horror.

VIDEO: Gunman kills 5 in campus attack

One student, who was in the lecture hall where the shooting occurred that left five dead, said he saw a man, dressed in black, enter the room; and then, "Boom." It was like a movie, he said. Some of the students, so used to seeing this sort of behavior IN movies, at first thought it was a joke, or a drill.

But the blood, frozen on the pathways of this campus, heading away from Cole Hall in all directions, is very real.

Today this college community is having a difficult time dealing with that.

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