ENOUGH ALREADY.  NIU football player in critical condition after shooting.

Two Northern Illinois University students have been charged in the Tuesday night shooting that left NIU football player Devon Butler in critical condition.

Wrong place, wrong time.

The DeKalb Police Department and NIU confirmed Butler, a starting linebacker, was shot late Tuesday night in an Aspen Court apartment building. Kishwaukee Community Hospital confirmed late Wednesday morning that Butler had been treated at the DeKalb-based hospital, but said he no longer was a patient there. Butler was airlifted early Wednesday morning to OSF Saint Anthony Medical Center in Rockford, where he was listed in critical condition after undergoing surgery.


DeKalb Police Chief Bill Feithen said that the shooting happened as a result of a drug deal that had gone bad earlier Tuesday. He stressed that Butler had no knowledge of or was involved or present during that drug transaction. He said Butler was at the off-campus apartment Tuesday where he was shot to meet with friends.


Feithen said that the drug deal took place at an arranged location within several hundred feet of the apartment where the shooting took place. He said the two suspects intended to sell marijuana to another person; that individual took the drugs and did not pay for them.

The larcenous customer might have been a neighbor.

The drug transaction did not happen at that apartment, Feithen said, but the suspects believed that one of the individuals involved in the earlier incident was in that residence.


One of those shots penetrated the window in apartment No. 3 and struck Butler. Feithen said that Butler was shot on the right side of his back, and that bullet fragments have been recovered from his body. Butler is out of surgery; Feithen said that he is "cautiously optimistic" that Butler will be OK.

Updates will be provided tomorrow. No more posting tonight.