Virginia Tech Shootings!! OMG

[The Big PINK One♥]

^{What has this world come to...??}

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BLACKSBURG, Va. - A gunman opened fire in a dorm and classroom at Virginia Tech on Monday, killing 21 people in the deadliest campus shooting in U.S. history. The gunman was killed, but it was unclear if he was shot by police or took his own life.

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

The university reported shootings at opposite sides of the 2,600-acre campus, beginning at about 7:15 a.m. at West Ambler Johnston, a co-ed residence hall that houses 895 people, and continuing about two hours later at Norris Hall, an engineering building.

Some but not all the dead were students. One student was killed in a dorm and the others were killed in the classroom, Virginia Tech Police Chief W.R. Flinchum.

The name of the gunman was not released. It was not known if he was a student.

Up until Monday, the deadliest campus shooting in U.S. history took place in 1966 at the University of Texas, where Charles Whitman climbed to the 28th-floor observation deck of a clock tower and opened fire. He killed 16 people before he was gunned down by police. In the Columbine High bloodbath near Littleton, Colo., in 1999, two teenagers killed 12 fellow students and a teacher before taking their own lives.

After Monday's shootings, all entrances to the campus were closed. The campus was to reopen Tuesday but classes were canceled.

The university set up a meeting place for families to reunite with their children at the Inn at Virginia Tech. It also made counselors available and planned a convocation for Tuesday at the Cassell Coliseum basketball arena.

After the shootings, students were told to stay inside away from the windows.

"There's just a lot of commotion. It's hard to tell exactly what's going on," said Jason Anthony Smith, 19, who lives in the dorm where shooting took place.

Aimee Kanode, a freshman from Martinsville, said the shooting happened on the 4th floor of West Ambler Johnston dormitory, one floor above her room. Kanode's resident assistant knocked on her door about 8 a.m. to notify students to stay put.

"They had us under lockdown," Kanode said. "They temporarily lifted the lockdown, the gunman shot again."

"We're all locked in our dorms surfing the Internet trying to figure out what's going on," Kanode said.

Madison Van Duyne, a student who was interviewed by telephone on CNN, said, "We are all in lockdown. Most of the students are sitting on the floors away from the windows just trying to be as safe as possible."

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.

In August 2006, 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.

[kittyfire]

This is so sad and scary [because I live on a college campus too].

Here's an update:

April 17, 2007 — We now know the identity of the killer at Virginia Tech.

He is Cho Seung-Hui, a 23-year-old resident alien of the United States, as first reported by ABC News.

Cho is a South Korean national, a Virginia Tech senior majoring in English and the man who killed 33 people — inlcuding himself — on the Virginia Tech campus Monday.

Sources tell ABC News that Cho killed two people in a dorm room, returned to his own dorm room where he re-armed and left a "disturbing note" before entering a classroom building on the other side of campus to continue his rampage.

Cho's identity has been confirmed with a positive fingerprint match on the guns used in the rampage and with immigration materials.

"Lab results confirm that one of the two weapons seized in Norris Hall was used in both shootings," Virigina Tech Police Chief Wendell Flinchum said at a press conference Tuesday morning.

At this time, police are not looking for a second shooter, however, they did not rule out the possibility that an accomplice may have been involved. Sources say Cho was carrying a backpack that contained receipts for a March purchase of a Glock 9 mm pistol. Witnesses had told authorities that the shooter was carrying a backpack. Police also said this morning that Cho had a .22 caliber pistol. Sections of chain similar to those used to lock the main doors at Norris Hall, the site of the second shooting that left 31 dead, were also found inside a Virginia Tech dormitory, sources confirmed to ABC News.

President Charles Steger defended the school's response to the 7:15 a.m. shooting at West Ambler Johnston Hall in an interview Tuesday with "Good Morning America's" Diane Sawyer, saying that they believed the incident was confined to the dormitory. The first e-mail notifying students of the dorm shooting was not sent by the school until 9:26 a.m.

"The second shooting, no one predicted that was also going to happen that morning," Steger said. "So if you're talking about locking it down, what is it you're going to lock down? It's like closing a city. It doesn't happen simultaneously."


that police were still investigating the possibility of a second shooter, and said authorities had already interviewed one "person of interest."

"There may be others," said Steger, who will join the Virginia Tech chief of police at a press conference Tuesday morning. "We just don't know."

In a press conference Monday night, the university president, who continues to defend the way the school responded the dormitory shooting that began the day of campus bloodshed, gave a detailed timeline of the morning's tragic events.

He said a 911 call reporting a shooting at a dormitory was made at approximately 7:15 a.m. While police were trying to assess what they first believed was a domestic dispute, they received a second 911 call, nearly two and a half hours later, that reported shootings on the opposite side of campus. According to the Virginia Tech Police Chief Wendell Flinchum, officials had not definitively linked the two shootings as of Monday night.

Full coverage continues on "Good Morning America" and "World News With Charles Gibson" an ABC network special Tuesday at 10 p.m. EDT

Flinchum said they have ruled out the possibility of a murder-suicide in the first shooting at West Ambler Johnston Hall. Ryan "Stack" Clark, a member of the school's marching band, the Marching Virginians, and a student resident assistant, was killed there by a shot in the neck. The second victim in the dorm shooting was a female.

Last night, investigators also had a preliminary identification of the shooter involved in the Norris Hall rampage.

When asked to describe the scene at Norris Hall, where the second shooting took place, Flinchum called it "one of the worst things I've seen in my life."

While Flinchum would not name any of the victims, he did say that university staff members were among the dead.

There have been, however, at least 15 shooting victims identified in press accounts, including four professors and 11 students.

Some students question why administrators did not cancel classes after the first shooting, and why it took more than two hours to inform the university community via e-mail about the first incident.

For the rest of the article, please go to here.