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Massacre at Virginia Tech

Police arrive at Virginia Tech

April 16, 2007

Media General News Service

BLACKSBURG, Va. — Virginia Tech became the scene of the deadliest campus shooting in U.S. history when at least 33 people were killed this morning. At least 28 more were being treated at area hospitals.

The horror scene — the sounds of multiple gunshots being recorded on camera phones, swarms of heavily armed police racing across campus and lines of ambulances waiting to transport victims — prompted a decision to close the 26,000-student campus shortly before noon. One of the camera-phone videos captured what sounded like more than 30 gunshots.

The death toll rose throughout the morning and afternoon before school officials said in a news conference shortly before 5 p.m. that they had confirmed that 33 people were dead, including 31 in Norris Hall. Police said at the late-afternoon news conference that some of the doors had been chained closed in Norris Hall, an academic building for engineering and business students.

Authorities said they had confirmed that the shooter was among the dead, and university officials turned their attention to notifying the families of the victims.

Authorities said those who lost their lives were victims of planned attacks in two locations. The reasons for the attacks were not immediately clear.

"Today the university was struck with a tragedy that we consider of monumental proportions," Virginia Tech President Charles W. Steger said. "The university is shocked and indeed horrified."

At the late-afternoon news conference, Steger defended the decision against sending out a campuswide alert until more than two hours after the first reported shooting. He said the best information police had was that the shooter had left campus.

"You can only make decisions based on information you have," Steger said.

He added that authorities felt the students would be safest by remaining in their classrooms.

Today marked the second time in less than a year that the Virginia Tech campus in rural Montgomery County was shut because of a shooting. In August, escaped jail inmate William C. Morva allegedly killed a sheriff’s deputy and a hospital guard in the area.

Extra counselors were being sent to Virginia Tech this afternoon to speak with anyone on campus who might need assistance, and a nondenominational service was scheduled for Tuesday at 2 p.m. at Cassell Coliseum.

The school said this morning’s shootings occurred at 7:15 a.m. on the fourth floor of the West Ambler Johnston dormitory and at 9:15 on the second floor of Norris Hall. A man and a woman were found dead in the dorm, police said. The shooter was among the dead in Norris, the school said.

Virginia Tech police said the shooter took his own life. He was not carrying any identification, they said, and by late afternoon, authorities had yet to determine his name.

Authorities said at least 17 people were being treated at Montgomery Regional Hospital, and at least 11 more were taken to hospitals as far away as Roanoke, some 30 miles away. It was not clear how many of those taken to the hospitals had gunshot wounds.

The school canceled classes at 10:20 a.m. and urged people to stay indoors. Campus police and officers from state and federal law-enforcement agencies descended on the campus, armed with shotguns and automatic weapons. Ambulances with lights flashing were scattered around the campus, and police using loudspeakers told everyone to stay indoors and away from windows.

Shortly after 11 a.m., university officials told The Times-Dispatch that one person was in custody and another was being sought. At 11:19, one man was seen in custody and in handcuffs in the back of a police car outside Burruss Hall. Authorities then moved hurriedly from Burruss to tennis courts near Cassell Coliseum.

At the late-afternoon news conference, police said no one was still in custody. They said people had been detained for questioning in the moments immediately following the shootings in an attempt to determine what was happening.

The school posted an initial statement on its Web site saying a shooting had occurred at the West Ambler Johnston dorm.

Later in the morning, the school said there had been "a multiple shooting with multiple victims in Norris Hall."

The doors that were chained closed in Norris prompted several people to jump from the building’s second-story windows, police said.

Veronica Gentry, 21, a junior, spent the morning in lockdown in Pamplin Hall.

"There was a lot of confusion because we were getting little pieces of information here and there from the Virginia Tech Web site," she said by cell phone. "We kind of heard it was getting more serious; then the building started getting more crowded."

Students were packed into rooms in Pamplin and told to get out of the hallways and away from windows, said Gentry, who is from Annapolis, Md.

Robert Fried, 20, a student from Vienna, said he saw two people removed from Holden Hall on stretchers shortly after 10 a.m.

Students Madison Earnest and Jacquelyn Holliday spoke by cell phone shortly before 10:30 from a psychology building, where they said the department head came to their class to tell them what was going on.

Freshman Lisa MacPherson, 19, lives on the second floor of West Ambler Johnston. The shooting, she told her father in a phone conversation this morning, occurred on the fourth floor of the dorm, known by students as West A-J.

In that phone call at 10:39 a.m., she said she received notice this morning from her resident advisers that students were not to leave their rooms, according to her father, Robert E. MacPherson of Powhatan County.

A little later, MacPherson was told that they should leave, so she and her resident adviser went over to another hall and were kept under lockdown, her father said.

"She was very much under control when I spoke to her," Robert MacPherson said. "Obviously, I’m concerned. I know she’s safe, but it’s very concerning as a parent not being close enough to do anything about it."

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, on a trade mission to India, was briefed on the shootings and dispatched John Marshall, Virginia’s secretary of public safety, to Blacksburg, said Kaine spokeswoman Delacey Skinner. Kaine planned to return from India immediately and said he would be in Blacksburg on Tuesday.

The governor said the Virginia Tech community, no matter how badly shaken by the tragedy, would rebound.

"I have the greatest confidence that while it will be a very, very difficult time on that campus, the spirit will remain strong," he said in a telephone interview late this afternoon with WSLS-TV.

Before today, the deadliest campus shooting in the U.S. occurred in 1966 when Charles Whitman opened fire from a clock tower at the University of Texas, killing 16 people before he was shot to death by police.

At Tech this past August, the opening day of classes was canceled and the campus closed when Morva, the escaped jail inmate, allegedly killed a hospital guard and a Montgomery County sheriff’s deputy involved in a massive manhunt just off the campus.

Morva is charged with capital murder in those shootings. The search for Morva forced Virginia Tech to cancel the first day of fall classes and shut down traffic in parts of Blacksburg.

Morva, 25, was awaiting trial on robbery charges when he escaped. Authorities allege he overpowered a deputy at a hospital where he had been taken for injuries, killed unarmed hospital guard Derrick McFarland and the next day killed Montgomery Deputy Eric Sutphin.

Morva, who formerly lived in Chesterfield County, lived in Montgomery at the time of his arrest. His escape came three days before he was to stand trial in the August 2005 attempted robbery of the Deli Mart. He was convicted of that robbery last month.

Richmond Times-Dispatch staff writers Joe Macenka, Rex Bowman, Olympia Meola, Carlos Santos and Tammie Smith and copy messenger Diana Diehl contributed to this report.