Feithen said the suspect is not an NIU student but "was visiting a friend in DeKalb." He credited "friends and witnesses" with helping police track down Thrailkill, including some of the dozens of people who were at the party.



Agee was a senior majoring in sociology who already had a job offer lined up in San Diego. His parents had planned to pick him up this morning for the Thanksgiving holiday.



"I just lost my baby boy. That's it," his father Steven Agee Sr. told the Tribune this morning. "And now there will be no more holidays with him, not even this one coming now.



"You send your kid off to college and what happens," Agee Sr. said. "You hear about these shootings all the time, but you never think it'll happen to you."



Steven was the youngest of the Agee's two sons and had graduated from Thornwood High School in South Holland.



Agee Jr. had already secured a job offer in San Diego, and was called in for a second job interview with a company in Tinley Park, according to his mother, Kimberly.



"I'm just numb," she said, sighing deeply.



Kimberly Agee said her son, in his own way, had prepared her in case he left the area for a job after he graduated.



"He asked me to stop babying him," she recalled. "(He said) he was grown and graduating from college and just let him make his transition from childhood to adulthood and to just let him and stop holding on to him so tight."



She remembers telling him, "I'm Mom and that's what we do."



Awake for hours with the terrible news of her youngest son's death, a weary Kimberly Agee said she had little thought about the man who gunned down her son.



"Right now, what difference does it make? I can't put him in the car with me and take Steven home. We are not going to sit down and have dinner on Thursday if they catch (the gunman). If they give (the gunman) 100 years (in prison), Steven is not coming home to me and his dad."



"We have to make funeral arrangements for my baby and that's not the way it should be."



After spending several hours with police, NIU senior Ryan Chambers -- who lives in the apartment where Agee was shot -- packed to leave DeKalb for the holiday.



A tall, soft-spoken man, Chambers remembered all the "deep" conversations he had had with Agee, a sociology major. The two had known each other five years.



"Somebody he didn't even know had a gun ... and shot him," he said. "I was upstairs and I heard three shots.



"People were screaming," he said, starting to cry. "I just told him to hang on."



Students Latrece Baker, 22, and Caress Moss, 24, were among the few students walking on campus this morning.



"It does put you in a state of mind where you are concerned on campus about public safety," Moss said.



Baker said "everybody knew" Agee. "You go to college to better yourself," she said.



Agee was tentatively slated to graduate next spring, said Brad Hoey, NIU's director of communications and marketing. "We're deeply saddened and our hearts and prayers are with the Agee family," he said.



The university has experienced several violent episodes on and off campus in recent years.



The most notable was on Valentine's Day 2008, when a former student opened fire, killing five people and wounding more than a dozen before killing himself.



Earlier this year, two NIU students were charged with shooting a NIU linebacker at an off-campus apartment.



In a message posted on the school's website, NIU President John Peters denounced the "senseless act of violence" that took Agee's life.



"In this country, we send our children to college, and we expect them to be safe," he said. "Unfortunately, in our society today, we have come to see acts of violence involving young people as an all too common occurrence. There is a danger that we may become desensitized and accept increasing levels of violence as a fact of life.



"We cannot allow this to happen.



"As parents, teachers, students, friends and members of our community, we must continue to make our world safe for young people to grow, thrive and reach their potential."



wlee@tribune.com