Posted on 04/16/2007 7:14:16 AM PDT by LexHoskin
Gunman on Campus; Stay inside your building, away from windows; Shooting incident at West Ambler Johnston Hall
(Excerpt) Read more at vtnews.vt.edu ...
According to all accounts the Rumanian professor was the one who held the door shut while his students escaped through the window; if correct, he would not have been the first one shot.
Wonder if he was with the PLA?
He was there last night.
By ADAM GELLER, AP National Writer 5 minutes ago
BLACKSBURG, Va. - Virginia Tech's president said a university 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 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. The gunman struck down two people at a dormitory Monday before killing 30 more people at a campus building and finally killing 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," said Steger in an interview with CNN, confirming for the first time that the killer was a student.
Steger also defended the delay in warning students about the gunman. Some students said their first warning came more than two hours after the first shooting, in an e-mail at 9:26 a.m. By then 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."
The slayings left people of this once-peaceful mountain town and the university at its heart praying for the victims of the deadliest shooting rampage in U.S. history, struggling to find order in a tragedy of such unspeakable horror it defies reason.
"For Ryan and Emily and for those whose names we do not know," one woman pleaded in a church service Monday night.
Another mourner added: "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 immediately 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 they got no warning from the university until an e-mail that 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 said authorities believed the shooting at the dorm was a domestic dispute and mistakenly thought the gunman had fled the campus.
"We had no reason to suspect any other incident was going to occur," he said.
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." The message warned students to be cautious and contact police about anything suspicious.
Thanks.
You assume that all college students are binge drinkers. Perhaps the people you used to hang out with were, but that does not mean that all are
The college CCW restrictions also restrict faculty, administrative workers, and grad students
Oh God. OT, I know but the sight of Shep Smith getting all weepy for the Hokies on FNC is just too much. Blubbering about how ‘the Hokies will “never be the same.” I swear.
There are occasions when I'm glad I don't have a boob tube in here. This is one of them.
In the mid-seventies at my mid-atlantic state U we had guns and knives. Also baseball bats.
LOL. Seeing Old Shep getting in touch with his sensitive side is DEFINITELY one of those times.
bookmark
There have been a variety of spree killings accomplished solely with handguns by people without significant military training that had a final dead and wounded toll at least in the ballpark of this one.
Oddly I think the whole military training thing is "wishful thinking" - too frightening to contemplate this being possible by someone without military training
Guy who killed 23 in a diner in Killeen Texas used only 9mm pistols and had some brief Navy and Merchant Marine experience (and no, not a SEAL.)
Looking around the world you'll see a few others in the plus 10+ range only with handguns and no military training.
And are people implying that thinking to chain the door shut behind you is some sort of specialized military training?
Maybe not. Look at your link, section B5 #5. As far as I know a student visa is a nonimmigrant visa.
(B5) Are there certain persons who cannot legally receive or possess firearms and/or ammunition? [Back]
Yes, a person who –
(1) Has been convicted in any court of a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding 1 year;
(2) Is a fugitive from justice;
(3) Is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance;
(4) Has been adjudicated as a mental defective or has been committed to a mental institution;
(5) Is an alien illegally or unlawfully in the United States or an alien admitted to the United States under a nonimmigrant visa;
And we could ask when will those countries and cultures learn and such needless deaths end.
Hot Air and Jawa reporting that the guy with the Live Journal is not the shooter.
Rumor Dispelled, Killer ID’d
http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/187444.php
But would we even have the interest in doing so?? :-)
Already, some newspapers are taking comments on "why didn't the police act fast enough" and "why didn't VA Tech have a system in place". It's disgusting. Designed to sell newspapers. Just flat out shameful.
In re the first shooting, police were already looking for the shooter.
In a town of 27,000 -- when there is a murder, is the entire town supposed to be "locked down"? Is there supposed to be an alert for everyone everywhere to LOCK DOWN AND STAY IN DOORS?
No.
Are police supposed to be able to do a search of all major buildings in a town of 27,000?
So stunning, that "global warming enthusiasts" such as the MSM are, cannot see the parallels to what happened at VA Tech.
What happened yesterday? Liken it to an earthquake or a tornado. VA tech HAD measures in place. In an earthquake -- THERE ARE measures in place. This doesn't mean people who were in elevators weren't trapped, or folks standing near a glass window when the earthquake hit weren't hurt or killed.
Some tornadoes defy the best laid plans of man. This too is what happened yesterday at VA Tech.
But no -- Blame game, blame game, blame game has got to rule the day.
The shooters were HUMAN, and we couldn't stop them, but somehow and with Al Gore's guidance we're going to be able to stop killer tomatoes from turning on their growers.
Gateway Pundit starts a victims list, some pictures:
http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2007/04/virginia-tech-massacre-victims.html
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