|
by Time Magazine
Injured occupants are carried out
of Norris Hall at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va., where a gunman
opened fire in a dorm and classroom, killing thirty people.
April 16, 2007
(BLACKSBURG, Va.) — A gunman opened
fire in a Virginia Tech dorm and then, two hours later, shot up a
classroom building across campus Monday, killing 32 people in the
deadliest shooting rampage in U.S. history. The gunman committed
suicide, bringing the death toll to 33.
Students bitterly complained that
there were no public-address announcements on campus after the first
burst of gunfire. Many said the first word they received from the
university was an e-mail more than two hours into the rampage — around
the time the gunman struck again.
Virginia Tech President Charles
Steger said authorities believed that 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.
He defended the university's
handling of the tragedy, saying: "We can only make decisions based on
the information you had on the time. You don't have hours to reflect on
it."
Investigators offered no motive for
the attack. The gunman's name was not immediately released, and it was
not known if he was a student.
The shootings spread panic and
confusion on campus. Witnesses reporting students jumping out the
windows of a classroom building to escape the gunfire. SWAT team members
with helmets, flak jackets and assault rifles swarmed over the campus.
Students and faculty members carried out some of the wounded themselves,
without waiting for ambulances to arrive. A student used his cell-phone
camera to record the sound of shots echoing through the stone classroom
building.
The massacre took place at opposite
sides of the 2,600-acre campus, beginning at about 7:15 a.m. at West
Ambler Johnston, a coed dormitory that houses 895 people, and continuing
at least two hours later at Norris Hall, an engineering building about a
half-mile away, authorities said.
Two people were killed in a
dormitory room, and 31 others were killed in the classroom building,
including the gunman, police said. "Today the university was struck with
a tragedy that we consider of monumental proportions," Steger said. "The
university is shocked and indeed horrified."
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 notify members of the
university, but 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 went out, the university began telephoning resident advisers
in the dorms to notify them and sent people to knock on doors to spread
the word.
Virginia Tech Police Chief Wendell
Flinchum would not say how many weapons the gunman carried. But a law
enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the
investigation was incomplete, said that the gunman had two pistols and
multiple clips of ammunition. Flinchum said that some doors in the
classroom building had been chained shut from the inside.
Police said they were still
investigating the shooting at the dorm when they got word of gunfire at
the classroom building.
Some students bitterly questioned
why the gunman was able to strike a second time. "What happened today,
this was ridiculous," student Jason Piatt told CNN. "While they send out
that e-mail, 20 more people got killed."
Students and Laura Wedin, a student
programs manager at Virginia Tech, said the first notification they got
of the shootings came in an e-mail at 9:26 a.m., more than two hours
after the first shooting.
The e-mail had few details. It read:
"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.
Student Maurice Hiller said he went
to a 9 a.m. class two buildings away from the engineering building, and
no warnings were coming over the outdoor public address system on campus
at the time.
Everett Good, junior, said of the
lack of warning: "I'm trying to figure that out. Someone's head is
definitely going to roll over that."
"We were kept in the dark a lot
about exactly what was going on," said Andrew Capers Thompson, a
22-year-old graduate student from Walhalla, S.C.
At least 26 people were being
treated at three area hospitals for gunshot wounds and other injuries,
authorities said. Their exact conditions were not disclosed, but at
least one was sent to a trauma center and six were in surgery,
authorities said.
Up until Monday, the deadliest mass
shooting in U.S. history was in Killeen, Texas, in 1991, when George
Hennard plowed his pickup truck into a Luby's Cafeteria and shot 23
people to death, then himself. The massacre Monday took place almost
eight years to the day after the Columbine High bloodbath near
Littleton, Colo. On April 20, 1999, two teenagers killed 12 fellow
students and a teacher before taking their own lives.
Previously, the deadliest campus
shooting in U.S. history was a rampage that took place in 1966 at the
University of Texas at Austin, where Charles Whitman climbed the clock
tower and opened fire with a rifle from the 28th-floor observation deck.
He killed 16 people before he was shot to death by police.
Founded in 1872, Virginia Tech is
nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains of southwestern Virginia, about 160
miles west of Richmond. With more than 25,000 full-time students, it has
the state's largest full-time student population. The school is best
known for its engineering school and its powerhouse Hokies football
team.
The rampage took place on a brisk
spring day, with snow flurries swirling around the campus. The campus is
centered around the Drill Field, a grassy field where military cadets —
who now represent a fraction of the student body — practice. The dorm
and the classroom building are on opposites sides of the Drill Field.
A gasp could be heard at a campus
news conference early in the day when the police chief announced that at
least 20 people had been killed. Previously, only one person was thought
to have been killed.
A White House spokesman said
President Bush was horrified by the rampage and offered his prayers to
the victims and the people of Virginia. "The president believes that
there is a right for people to bear arms, but that all laws must be
followed," spokeswoman Dana Perino said.
After the shootings, all entrances
to the campus were closed, and classes were canceled through Tuesday.
The university set up a meeting place for families to reunite with their
children. It also made counselors available and planned an assembly for
Tuesday at the basketball arena. After the shooting began, students were
told to stay inside away from the windows.
Police said there had been bomb
threats on campus over the past two weeks by authorities but said they
have not determined a link to the shootings.
It was second time in less than a
year that the campus was closed because of a shooting.
Last August, the opening day of
classes was canceled and the campus closed when an escaped jail inmate
allegedly killed a hospital guard off campus and fled to the Tech area.
A sheriff's deputy involved in the manhunt was killed on a trail just
off campus. The accused gunman, William Morva, faces capital murder
charges.
Return to Table of Contents
|