BLACKSBURG, Va. - A gunman opened fire in a dorm and classroom at Virginia Tech on Monday, killing 21 people in the deadliest campus shooting in U.S. history. The gunman was killed, but it was unclear if he was shot by police or took his own life.
"Today the university was struck with a tragedy that we consider of monumental proportions," said Virginia Tech president Charles Steger. "The university is shocked and indeed horrified."
The university reported shootings at opposite sides of the 2,600-acre campus, beginning at about 7:15 a.m. at West Ambler Johnston, a co-ed residence hall that houses 895 people, and continuing about two hours later at Norris Hall, an engineering building.
Some but not all the dead were students. One student was killed in a dorm and the others were killed in the classroom, Virginia Tech Police Chief W.R. Flinchum.
The name of the gunman was not released. It was not known if he was a student.
Up until Monday, the deadliest campus shooting in U.S. history took place in 1966 at the University of Texas, where Charles Whitman climbed to the 28th-floor observation deck of a clock tower and opened fire. He killed 16 people before he was gunned down by police. In the Columbine High bloodbath near Littleton, Colo., in 1999, two teenagers killed 12 fellow students and a teacher before taking their own lives.
After Monday's shootings, all entrances to the campus were closed. The campus was to reopen Tuesday but classes were canceled.
The university set up a meeting place for families to reunite with their children at the Inn at Virginia Tech. It also made counselors available and planned a convocation for Tuesday at the Cassell Coliseum basketball arena.
After the shootings, students were told to stay inside away from the windows.
"There's just a lot of commotion. It's hard to tell exactly what's going on," said Jason Anthony Smith, 19, who lives in the dorm where shooting took place.
Aimee Kanode, a freshman from Martinsville, said the shooting happened on the 4th floor of West Ambler Johnston dormitory, one floor above her room. Kanode's resident assistant knocked on her door about 8 a.m. to notify students to stay put.
"They had us under lockdown," Kanode said. "They temporarily lifted the lockdown, the gunman shot again."
"We're all locked in our dorms surfing the Internet trying to figure out what's going on," Kanode said.
Madison Van Duyne, a student who was interviewed by telephone on CNN, said, "We are all in lockdown. Most of the students are sitting on the floors away from the windows just trying to be as safe as possible."
Police said there had been bomb threats on campus over the past two weeks by authorities but said they have not determined a link to the shootings.
It was second time in less than a year that the campus was closed because of a shooting.
In August 2006, the opening day of classes was canceled and the campus closed when an escaped jail inmate allegedly killed a hospital guard off campus and fled to the Tech area. A sheriff's deputy involved in the manhunt was killed on a trail just off campus.
The accused gunman, William Morva, faces capital murder charges.
-----------------------
BLACKSBURG, Va. — At least 32 people are confirmed dead and at least another 21 are wounded after a shooting at Virginia Tech University Monday morning, federal law enforcement officials told FOX News.
Campus police said there was only one shooter and he is now dead. They are unsure if the shooter was a student and it was unclear if he was shot by police or took his own life.
"The university was struck today with a tragedy of monumental proportions," Virginia Tech President Charles Steger said during a press conference shortly after noon. "The university is shocked and horrified that this would befall our campus ... I cannot begin to convey my own personal sense of loss over this senselessness of such an incomprehensible and heinous act."
It was the deadliest campus shooting in U.S. history.
Steger said school officials are notifying victims' next of kin, and state police and the FBI are still investigating the various crime scenes. They are still trying to identify all the victims. The university will set up counseling centers for students and faculty.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,266310,00.html
that was part of the article that the link will take you to!!
-------------------------
BLACKSBURG, Va. - Virginia Tech's president said Tuesday that a student was the gunman in at least the second of the two campus attacks that claimed 33 lives to become the deadliest shooting rampage in modern U.S. history.
Though he did not explicitly say the student was also the gunman in the first shooting, he said he did not believe there was another shooter at large.
Two hours after two people were killed at a dormitory Monday, 30 more people were killed at a campus building by a gunman who finally killed himself with a shot to his head.
"We do know that he was an Asian male — this is the second incident — an Asian man who was a resident in one of our dormitories," university president Charles Steger said in an interview with CNN, confirming for the first time that the killer was a student.
Steger also defended the university's delay in warning students after the first shooting. Some students said their first notice came in an e-mail at 9:26 a.m., after the second shooting had begun.
Steger said the university was trying to notify students who were already on-campus, not those who were commuting in.
"We warned the students that we thought were immediately impacted," he told CNN. "We felt that confining them to the classroom was how to keep them safest."
He said investigators did not know there was a shooter loose on campus in the interval between the two shootings because the first could have been a murder-suicide.
Two students told NBC's "Today" show they were unaware of the dorm shooting when they reported to a German class where the gunman later opened fire.
Derek O'Dell, his arm in a cast after being shot, described a shooter who fired away in "eerily silence" with "no specific target — just taking out anybody he could."
After the gunman left the room, students could hear him shooting other people down the hall. O'Dell said he and other students barricaded the door so the shooter couldn't get back in — though he later tried.
"After he couldn't get the door open he tried shooting it open... but the gunshots were blunted by the door," O'Dell said.
The slayings left people of this once-peaceful mountain town and the university at its heart praying for the victims, struggling to find order in a tragedy of such unspeakable horror it defies reason.
Laura Bush were planning to attend a 2 p.m. convocation Tuesday, and people sought comfort Monday night at a church servide.
One mourner pleaded "for parents near and far who wonder at a time like this, 'Is my child safe?'"
That question promises to haunt Blacksburg long after Monday's attacks. Investigators offered no motive, and the gunman's name was not released.
The shooting began about 7:15 a.m. on the fourth floor of West Ambler Johnston, a high-rise coed dormitory where two people died.
Police were still investigating around 9:15 a.m., when a gunman wielding two handguns and carrying multiple clips of ammunition stormed Norris Hall, a classroom building a half-mile away on the other side of the 2,600-acre campus.
At least 15 people were hurt in the second attack, some seriously. Many found themselves trapped after someone, apparently the shooter, chained and locked Norris Hall doors from the inside.
Students jumped from windows, and students and faculty carried away some of the wounded without waiting for ambulances to arrive.
SWAT team members with helmets, flak jackets and assault rifles swarmed over the campus. A student used his cell-phone camera to record the sound of bullets echoing through a stone building.
Inside Norris, the attack began with a thunderous sound from Room 206 — "what sounded like an enormous hammer," said Alec Calhoun, a 20-year-old junior who was in a solid mechanics lecture in a classroom next door.
Screams followed an instant later, and the banging continued. When students realized the sounds were gunshots, Calhoun said, he started flipping over desks to make hiding places. Others dashed to the windows of the second-floor classroom, kicking out the screens and jumping from the ledge of Room 204, he said.
"I must've been the eighth or ninth person who jumped, and I think I was the last," said Calhoun, of Waynesboro, Va. He landed in a bush and ran.
Calhoun said that the two students behind him were shot, but that he believed they survived. Just before he climbed out the window, Calhoun said, he turned to look at his professor, who had stayed behind, apparently to prevent the gunman from opening the door.
The instructor was killed, Calhoun said.
Erin Sheehan, who was in the German class next door to Calhoun's class, told the student newspaper, the Collegiate Times, that she was one of only four of about two dozen people in the class to walk out of the room. The rest were dead or wounded, she said.
She said the gunman "was just a normal-looking kid, Asian, but he had on a Boy Scout-type outfit. He wore a tan button-up vest, and this black vest, maybe it was for ammo or something."
The gunman first shot the professor in the head and then fired on the class, another student, Trey Perkins, told The Washington Post. The gunman was about 19 years old and had a "very serious but very calm look on his face," he said.
"Everyone hit the floor at that moment," said Perkins, 20, of Yorktown, Va., a sophomore studying mechanical engineering. "And the shots seemed like it lasted forever."
At an evening news conference, Police Chief Wendell Flinchum refused to dismiss the possibility that a co-conspirator or second shooter was involved. He said police had interviewed a male who was a "person of interest" in the dorm shooting and who knew one of the victims, but he declined to give details.
"I'm not saying there's a gunman on the loose," Flinchum said. Ballistics tests will help explain what happened, he said.
Some students bitterly complained that the first e-mail warning arrived more than two hours after the first shots.
"I think the university has blood on their hands because of their lack of action after the first incident," said Billy Bason, 18, who lives on the seventh floor of the dorm.
Steger emphasized that the university closed off the dorm after the first attack and decided to rely on e-mail and other electronic means to spread the word, but said that with 11,000 people driving onto campus first thing in the morning, it was difficult to get the word out.
He said that before the e-mail was sent, the university began telephoning resident advisers in the dorms and sent people to knock on doors. Students were warned to stay inside and away from the windows.
"We can only make decisions based on the information you had at the time. You don't have hours to reflect on it," Steger said.
The 9:26 e-mail had few details: "A shooting incident occurred at West Amber Johnston earlier this morning. Police are on the scene and are investigating."
Until Monday, the deadliest shooting in modern U.S. history was in Killeen, Texas, in 1991, when George Hennard plowed his pickup truck into a Luby's Cafeteria and shot 23 people to death, then himself.
The massacre Monday took place almost eight years to the day after the Columbine High bloodbath near Littleton, Colo. On April 20, 1999, two teenagers killed 12 fellow students and a teacher before taking their own lives.
Previously, the deadliest campus shooting in U.S. history was a rampage that took place in 1966 at the University of Texas at Austin, where Charles Whitman climbed the clock tower and opened fire with a rifle from the 28th-floor observation deck. He killed 16 people before he was shot to death by police.
Founded in 1872, Virginia Tech is nestled in southwestern Virginia, about 160 miles west of Richmond. With more than 25,000 full-time students, it has the state's largest full-time student population. The school is best known for its engineering school and its powerhouse Hokies football team.
Police said there had been bomb threats on campus over the past two weeks but that they had not determined whether they were linked to the shootings.
It was second time in less than a year that the campus was closed because of gunfire.
Last August, the opening day of classes was canceled when an escaped jail inmate allegedly killed a hospital guard off campus and fled to the Tech area. A sheriff's deputy was killed just off campus. The accused gunman, William Morva, faces capital murder charges.
Among the dead were professors Liviu Librescu and Kevin Granata, said Ishwar K. Puri, the head of the engineering science and mechanics department.
Librescu, an Israeli, was born in Romania and was known internationally for his research in aeronautical engineering, Puri wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press.
Granata and his students researched muscle and reflex response and robotics. Puri called him one of the top five biomechanics researchers in the country working on movement dynamics in cerebral palsy.
Also killed was Ryan Clark, a student from Martinez, Ga., who had several majors and carried a 4.0 grade-point average, said Vernon Collins, coroner in Columbia County, Ga.
His friend Gregory Walton, a 25-year-old who graduated last year, said he feared the nightmare had just begun.
"I knew when the number was so large that I would know at least one person on that list," said Walton, a banquet manager. "I don't want to look at that list. I don't want to.
"It's just, it's going to be horrible, and it's going to get worse before it gets better."
-------------------
BLACKSBURG, Va. - The gunman suspected of carrying out the Virginia Tech massacre that left 33 people dead was identified Tuesday as an English major whose creative writing was so disturbing that he was referred to the school's counseling service.
News reports also said that he may have been taking medication for depression, that he was becoming increasingly violent and erratic, and that he left a note in his dorm in which he railed against "rich kids," "debauchery" and "deceitful charlatans" on campus.
Cho Seung-Hui, a 23-year-old senior, arrived in the United States as boy from South Korea in 1992 and was raised in suburban Washington, D.C., officials said. He was living on campus in a different dorm from the one where Monday's bloodbath began.
Police and university officials offered no clues as to exactly what set him off on the deadliest shooting rampage in modern U.S. history.
"He was a loner, and we're having difficulty finding information about him," school spokesman Larry Hincker said.
Professor Carolyn Rude, chairwoman of the university's English department, said she did not personally know the gunman. But she said she spoke with Lucinda Roy, the department's director of creative writing, who had Cho in one of her classes and described him as "troubled."
"There was some concern about him," Rude said. "Sometimes, in creative writing, people reveal things and you never know if it's creative or if they're describing things, if they're imagining things or just how real it might be. But we're all alert to not ignore things like this."
She said Cho was referred to the counseling service, but she said she did not know when, or what the outcome was. Rude refused to release any of his writings or his grades, citing privacy laws.
The Chicago Tribune reported on its Web site that he left a note in his dorm room that included a rambling list of grievances. Citing unidentified sources, the Tribune said he had recently shown troubling signs, including setting a fire in a dorm room and stalking some women.
ABC, citing law enforcement sources, reported that the note, several pages long, explains Cho's actions and says, "You caused me to do this."
Investigators believe Cho at some point had been taking medication for depression, the Tribune reported.
The rampage consisted of two attacks, more than two hours apart — first at a dormitory, where two people were killed, then inside a classroom building, where 31 people, including Cho, died after being locked inside, Virginia State Police said. Cho committed suicide; two guns were found in the classroom building.
One law enforcement official said Cho's backpack contained a receipt for a March purchase of a Glock 9 mm pistol. Cho held a green card, meaning he was a legal, permanent resident, federal officials said. That meant he was eligible to buy a handgun unless he had been convicted of a felony.
Investigators stopped short of saying Cho carried out both attacks. But ballistics tests show one gun was used in both, Virginia State Police said.
And two law enforcement officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because the information had not been announced, said Cho's fingerprints were found on both guns. The serial numbers on the two weapons had been filed off, the officials said.
Col. Steve Flaherty, superintendent of the Virginia State Police, said it was reasonable to assume that Cho was the shooter in both attacks but that the link was not yet definitive. "There's no evidence of any accomplice at either event, but we're exploring the possibility," he said.
Officials said Cho graduated from a public high school in Chantilly, Va., in 2003. His family lived in an off-white, two-story townhouse in Centreville, Va.
"He was very quiet, always by himself," neighbor Abdul Shash said. Shash said Cho spent a lot of his free time playing basketball and would not respond if someone greeted him. He described the family as quiet.
Virginia Tech Police issued a speeding ticket to Cho on April 7 for going 44 mph in a 25 mph zone, and he had a court date set for May 23.
South Korea expressed its condolences, and said it hoped that the tragedy would not "stir up racial prejudice or confrontation."
"We are in shock beyond description," said Cho Byung-se, a Foreign Ministry official handling North American affairs.
A memorial service was planned for the victims Tuesday afternoon at the university, and President Bush planned to attend. Gov. Tim Kaine was flying back to Virginia from Tokyo for the gathering.
Classes were canceled for the rest of the week.
Many students were leaving town quickly, lugging pillows, sleeping bags and backpacks down the sidewalks.
Jessie Ferguson, 19, a freshman from Arlington, left Newman Hall and headed for her car with tears streaming down her red cheeks.
"I'm still kind of shaky," she said. "I had to pump myself up just to kind of come out of the building. I was going to come out, but it took a little bit of 'OK, it's going to be all right. There's lots of cops around.'"
Although she wanted to be with friends, she wanted her family more. "I just don't want to be on campus," she said.
The first deadly attack was at the dormitory around 7:15 a.m., but some students said they didn't get their first warning about a danger on campus until two hours later, in an e-mail at 9:26 a.m., around the time the second attack began.
Two students told NBC's "Today" show they were unaware of the dorm shooting when they walked into Norris Hall for a German class where the gunman later opened fire.
The victims in Norris Hall were found in four classrooms and a stairwell, Flaherty said. Cho was found dead in one of those classrooms, he said.
Derek O'Dell, his arm in a cast after being shot, described a shooter who fired away in "eerily silence" with "no specific target — just taking out anybody he could."
After the gunman left the room, students could hear him shooting other people down the hall. O'Dell said he and other students barricaded the door so the shooter couldn't get back in — though he later tried.
"After he couldn't get the door open he tried shooting it open ... but the gunshots were blunted by the door," O'Dell said.
Virginia Tech President Charles Steger emphasized that the university closed off the dorm after the first attack. He said that before the e-mail was sent, the university began telephoning resident advisers in the dorms and sent people to knock on doors to warn them.
"We can only make decisions based on the information you had at the time. You don't have hours to reflect on it," Steger said.
Until Monday, the deadliest shooting in modern U.S. history was in Killeen, Texas, in 1991, when George Hennard plowed his pickup truck into a Luby's Cafeteria and shot 23 people to death, then himself.
Previously, the deadliest campus shooting in U.S. history was a rampage that took place in 1966 at the University of Texas at Austin, where Charles Whitman climbed the clock tower and opened fire with a rifle from the 28th-floor observation deck. He killed 16 people before he was shot to death by police.
-------------------
----------------------------------
A look at some of the victims killed in the Virginia Tech massacre:
Ross Abdallah Alameddine
Alameddine, 20, of Saugus, Mass., was a sophomore who had just declared English as his major.
Friends created a memorial page on Facebook.com that described Alameddine as "an intelligent, funny, easygoing guy."
"You're such an amazing kid, Ross," wrote Zach Allen, who along with Alameddine attended Austin Preparatory School in Reading, Mass. "You always made me smile, and you always knew the right thing to do or say to cheer anyone up."
Alameddine was killed in the classroom building, according to Robert Palumbo, a family friend who answered the phone at the Alameddine residence Tuesday.
Alameddine's mother, Lynnette Alameddine said she was outraged by how victims' relatives were notified of the shooting.
"It happened in the morning and I did not hear (about her son's death) until a quarter to 11 at night," she said. "That was outrageous. Two kids died, and then they shoot a whole bunch of them, including my son."
___
Christopher James Bishop
Bishop, 35, taught German at Virginia Tech and helped oversee an exchange program with a German university.
Bishop decided which German-language students at Virgina Tech could attend the Darmstadt University of Technology to improve their German.
"He would teach them German in Blacksburg, and he would decide which students were able to study" abroad, Darmstadt spokesman Lars Rosumek said.
The school set up a book of condolences for students, staff and faculty to sign, along with information about the Virginia shootings.
"Of course many persons knew him personally and are deeply, deeply shocked about his death," Rosumek said.
Bishop earned bachelor's and master's degrees in German and was a Fulbright scholar at Christian-Albrechts University in Kiel, Germany.
According to his Web site, Bishop spent four years living in Germany, where he "spent most of his time learning the language, teaching English, drinking large quantities of wheat beer, and wooing a certain fraulein."
The "fraulein" was Bishop's wife, Stephanie Hofer, who also teaches in Virginia Tech's German program.
___
Bishop's personal Web site: South Korea into an Air Force family and lived in Texas and California before settling in the northern Virginia suburb of Annandale.
Read, 19, considered a handful of colleges, including nearby George Mason University, before choosing Virginia Tech. It was a popular destination among her Annandale High School classmates, according to her aunt Karen Kuppinger.
She had yet to declare a major.
"I think she wanted to try to spread her wings," said Kuppinger, of Rochester, N.Y.
Kuppinger said her niece had struggled adjusting to Tech's sprawling 2,600-acre campus. But she had recently begun making friends and looking into a sorority.
Kuppinger said the family started calling Read as news reports surfaced.
"After three or four hours passed and she hadn't picked up her cell phone or answered her e-mail ... we did get concerned," Kuppinger said. "We honestly thought she would pop up."
--------------------------
BLACKSBURG, Va. - The gunman suspected of carrying out the Virginia Tech massacre that left 33 people dead was described Tuesday as a sullen loner whose creative writing in English class was so disturbing that he was referred to the school's counseling service.
News reports also said that he may have been taking medication for depression, that he was becoming increasingly violent and erratic, and that he left a note in his dorm in which he railed against "rich kids," "debauchery" and "deceitful charlatans" on campus
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/virginia_tech_shooting;_ylt=Aqx7RRtrWwYqDEg9SBOREobmWMcF
-------------------------------------
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/files/specials/interactives/_national/vtech_map/index.html?SITE=YAHOO&SECTION=HOME
Campus map with timeline from YAHOO
--------------------------------------
www.hostdrjack.com ( MAY GOD'S ANGEL'S WRAP THIER WINGS AROUND YOU AND PROTECT YOU ALL ) WROTE BY ME 3/14/97 TY HUGGS CHERIE
-------------------------------------------
http://newsbloggers.aol.com/2007/04/17/cho-seung-huis-plays/
the 2 plays writting by the shooter
http://news.aol.com/virginia-tech-shootings/cho-seung-hui/_a/richard-mcbeef-cover-page/20070417134109990001
http://news.aol.com/virginia-tech-shootings/cho-seung-hui/_a/mr-brownstone-title-page/20070417141309990001
both are very very disturbing!
----------------
Even more disturbing the video clips sent to NBC
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18169776/
===========================
~~~~feel free to add what you have heard~~~~
Yesterday our world was once again shattered by an unimaginable horror. A school was once again the target of a horrendous tragedy. Our innocent chidren were again the target of a madman that brought sorrow pain and anguish to alot of families. Lets keep VA Tech and their families in our hearts thoughts and prayers as they deal with pain unlike any we could ever know unless we have been there and experienced what they are dealing with at this moment in time. Columbine was something that brought our fears to reality. Now VA Tech has once again brought that fear back to a reality. We try to protect our children while they are home and keep them from the sickness in the world. Then when they go to make something of themselves it seems like the sickness comes to them. What can we do? Nothing and thats the sad part. Unless we just keep them home 24/7 we cant shelter them from the pain and sorrow of what this world has become. So lets just love them while we can and pray that we never have to cry as our child or loved one is lowered into their grave as the families from VA Tech are doing now. Mat God Bless Them All and May They Always Know... THEY ARE IN OUR PRAYERS AND OUR HEARTS!!
