latest from Tech
In addition to an earlier shooting today in West Ambler Johnston, there has been a multiple shooting with multiple victims in Norris Hall.
Police and EMS are on the scene.
Police have one shooter in custody and as part of routine police procedure, they continue to search for a second shooter.
All people in university buildings are required to stay inside until further notice.
All entrances to campus are closed.
A student on MSNBC said the first victim was a student - it sounded like she said he was dead. The second person shot was a professor.
I worked as a faculty member at Virginia Tech for 13 years before moving to another university recently. I’m familiar with the campus and will post a few comments to familiarize folks with the area.
The www.vt.edu web site is very slow in responding, so it’s probably best that we don’t hit it too much and leave the bandwidth for parents and others close to the situation.
The Ambler-Johnston residence hall complex is on the east side of campus and right across the street from the tennis courts and basketball arena/atheletics complex, so all of the references to that area may have been associated with a single gunman in that part of campus.
Burrus Hall, McBryde Hall and Norris hall are all on the west side of campus in the same general area. They are separated from Ambler-Johnston by 1/2 mile and a large open field called the ‘Drill Field’. It’s hard to imagine a gunman moving between those two areas in such a short period of time if there were a large law enforcement presence out looking for him, so there may well be two separate incidents.
Norris hall houses the Mechanical Engineering department. It is directly adjacent to Burrus Hall which is the main administration building and the section of Burrus hall devoted to admissions and registration actually faces Norris hall. To a student walking by McBryde Hall (which houses the computer science department), gunshots at Norris Hall would sound like they were coming from behind McBryde.
Montgomery Regional Hospital is very close to campus, probably only 5 or 6 minutes when driving at high speeed. As another poster pointed out, it is pretty well-equiped for a small town hospital, but the emergency room is not that large.