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Parents Worry As They Await Word

April 16, 2007

Media General News Service

Virginia Tech has set up meeting places for families to reunite with their children following the deadly shootings.

The school also made counselors available and planned a convocation for Tuesday at Cassell Coliseum, the school's basketball arena. Though the university will be open, classes have been cancelled.

Parents of Virginia Tech students spent much of the morning worrying about their children and trying to reach them by cell phone.

Vanessa Poe of Richmond first heard about the shootings about 9:30 a.m. She quickly called her daughter, Susan, to make sure she was OK.

Susan Poe told her that she had seen students jumping from windows of Norris Hall, the site of the 9:15 a.m. shootings. She told her mother she stayed inside the architecture building, where she had a class this morning. Norris houses mainly engineering classes.

Vanessa Poe said her daughter told her rescue crews had trouble airlifting victims to hospitals outside the Blacksburg area because it was so windy this morning.

"Now the circuits are down, and I can't even reach her by cell," Vanessa Poe said.

Bonny Livick's son, Andrew, arrived at another engineering classroom building on campus about 10 a.m. He was locked in a room where he could hear a police scanner.

Livick spoke to him on his cell phone, and he seemed shaken up. He heard someone mention a "black tag" on the police scanner and didn't know what it meant. He and a friend checked on the Internet and learned it meant there were dead people in Norris.

Livick said she has been crying since this morning, even though her son was able to get back to his campus home.

"I just feel so bad for all that are involved in this," Livick said.