The shooting

With commencement around the corner, 30-year-old graduate student Norman Wallace, chairman of the campus Black MBA Association, was in Case Western's Weatherhead School of Management filling out a reimbursement form for some party supplies for the organization's planned festivities.

Footage from several security cameras tell the tale of what happened next: A man wearing a helmet and armed with a large rubber mallet shattered a glass door at the back of the building. The man proceeded to the lobby area, aimed a gun at Wallace and pulled the trigger. Wallace fell to the floor after a hollow-point bullet pierced Wallace's chest and destroyed nearly a quarter of his heart.

The sound of gunfire echoed through the building's atrium, but many thought it sounded like furniture being moved around on the basement level and continued to work. Several people reported looking down into the atrium and seeing Wallace on the floor, but figured it was part of a graduation prank. Word slowly spread of gunmen roaming through the building, and a schoolwide e-mail was sent out advising faculty, staff and students to barricade themselves in offices.

Professor Susan Helper was waiting for a wheelchair-bound colleague to maneuver his scooter to safety in her office when she suddenly stood face to face with the gunman in the doorway. She reached out and slammed the door — and a second later, a bullet tore through it and hit her chest, bouncing off her breastbone.

Her colleague, Professor Avi Dor, who has multiple sclerosis, had begun speeding down the hallway in his scooter when he realized the shooter was next to him. A bullet flew past his head, and Dor slumped in his chair pretending to have been shot.

Graduate student Argun Saatcioglu encountered the shooter in a hallway while investigating the loud bangs. Saatcioglu initially assumed the helmeted, armed man belonged to a responding police force, and didn't turn to run until it was too late; he was hit near the base of the spine, but the bullet traveled through his flesh and he was able to hobble down the stairs and out of the building.

Two members of the campus police were the first to enter the building, but quickly realized they were in well over their heads; they became drawn into a standoff with the gunman at opposite ends of a curved wall, and soon focused only on getting back out and calling other agencies for assistance. The University Circle Police Department, Cleveland Police, Euclid Police, the Cuyahoga County Sheriff's Office, and the FBI began responding — as did the media and loved ones of those trapped in the building.

Two team members held the arms and legs of Norman Wallace in an effort to drag him out to awaiting EMS personnel, partially shielded by the team's "bunkers" — riot gear that resembles a large shield. Before they reached the door, they were under fire.

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One officer grabbed a small three-dimensional model of the building from the reception desk and brought it to the makeshift basement command center, so that coordinating officers would have at least some understanding of the space. To complicate matters, almost none of the Cleveland Police Department teams' radios worked in the building, making the situation extremely dangerous as officers spread through the structure.

Over the next several hours, officers worked their way up one floor at the time, exchanging gunfire with the shooter at various points, and methodically cleared civilians out of room after room using a single master key.

At around 11 p.m., one team made its way through the winding entrance hallways of a fifth-floor auditorium, and was suddenly fired upon in the darkness. After the exchange of fire stopped, officers screamed at the shooter to give himself up — but then heard sounds of a gun being reloaded.

Eight hours after the shooting began, a voice declared surrender, and Biswanath Halder emerged from behind a dividing wall. Examination of his Cobray revealed a double-feed jam that Halder had been unable to clear, rendering the weapon useless. Some 30 additional jammed bullets were found throughout the building, indicating that the gun had caused Halder enough trouble to slow him down significantly. The second gun had been left elsewhere early on, and Halder himself had been shot in the shoulder and the chest at some point.

The prosecution's case