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Students Catch Sounds, Video Of Chaos

April 17, 2007

By Douglas Durden

The images were chilling.

Armed men raced across the Virginia Tech campus. Stretchers brought victims to ambulances.

But it was the voices that brought the story home as students, in the midst of an experience they can never forget, used their cell phones to call in their firsthand accounts to TV's cable news channels.

"I'm really worried," Tiffany Otey told CNN. "My friends could have been in the line of fire. I'm afraid to look at the list of fatalities."

On MSNBC, Trey Perkins said he didn't immediately identify the sounds as gunshots because "it wasn't loud like that.

"Then a guy comes into the room…and started shooting. He shot our teacher, and then we all got on the ground real quick and he started just shooting around at different people. I'm not sure how long it lasted. It felt like a really long time."

On Jamal Albarghouti's cell-phone video, 27 shots can be heard as the shaky image records officers circling a building.

Later in the day, after his video had become the dominant image from the shooting, Albarghouti was interviewed on CNN.

It turned out he is a Palestinian who grew up in Saudi Arabia and had lived in the West Bank.

"I never thought such a thing would happen in front of me here in Blacksburg," said Albarghouti, a graduate student.

On the all-news channels, airtime — sometimes squandered on tabloid stories — was consumed by a tragedy of unimaginable horror: college students shot and killed on their own campus.

The networks began tearing apart evening lineups. NBC scheduled a special "Dateline" last night. Both ABC and CBS scheduled news specials for tonight at 10. Evening anchors were sent to Blacksburg, including Brian Williams for NBC; and Katie Couric, a native Virginian, for CBS, which extended its 6:30 news by 30 minutes.

It was a story outdated almost as soon as it began airing.

In initial coverage, which began around 10 a.m., reports were of a single death. Tragically, it became 20, then 22, then more.

Local TV stations turned to other sources. WRIC carried ABC footage. WTVR went with CNN. WWBT carried MSNBC.

"This had too much impact for us to go back to regular programming as if nothing had happened," said Paula Hersh, assistant vice president of marketing for WWBT.

"We know there are families in Richmond who have children there. This might as well have happened in Richmond."

Contact staff writer Douglas Durden at ddurden@timesdispatch.com or (804) 649-6359.