Updates Added At The End:

The news of shootings at VA Tech are disturbing since I and many friends and family attended that great school nestled away in the hills of southwest VA. But there is some confusion and exaggeration in the reporting. I note this at LGF:

Local FOX affiliate WFXR-TV in Richmond reported that one shooting occurred between 7:15 a.m. and 7:30 a.m. at West Ambler Johnston, and another at 10 a.m. at Norris Hall. The school’s Web site confirmed the shooting at opposite ends of the 2,600-acre campus.

Police also said there is no evidence the two shootings at opposite ends of campus were related.

Being an old Agi school the campus is huge, but the main building center is not spread out across the entire property but collocated in a central area. The time to walk form Ambler to Norris is maximum 15 minutes. Driving (not surprising with satellite parking outside the ring of buildings) could take 40 minutes. So while there is no evidence of connection there clearly is plenty of time.

VA Tech has somewhere between 25-30,000 students with many living off campus. The basic point is finding two insane idiots in the population is not hard to do. And then there are number of other colleges nearby, and then there is the 15,000 locals in the area who have a love-hate relationship with the student population which annually arrives and outnumbers them 2-1. This is a historic tragedy and is possibly coordinated, possibly some retribution attack for the morning killing, if not the responsibility of one person. But time will tell.

Update: As suspected, this was the act of a lone, crazed individual. Now I am awaiting word of the gunman’s nationality and religious leanings, that will be critically telling. Lots of details here.

Update: Live blogging of the situation from nearby Roanoke. Clearly an assault weapon of some kind was used in the second, later shooting:

Freshman Hector Takahashi said he’d been in a class in Pamplin Hall, near Norris Hall, around 9:30 a.m. Students were talking about a shooting in West Ambler Johnston.

“Then all of a sudden, we were like, ‘Whoa — were those shots?'” he said. There were two quick bangs, then a pause, then a fusillade of at least 30 shots, he said.

…

Twenty of the victims were shot in Norris Hall, a classroom building, Flinchum said. One was shot early this morning in West Ambler-Johnston, a residence hall. A second person was shot in West Ambler-Johnston but survived.

Still awating word on the name or nationality of the shooter.

Update: Statement from VA-Tech President. Was the Shooter from Maryland? CORRECTION Reader Mike M reminded this Northern VA boy that Tech is in Montgomery County VA! My bad!

The Virginia Tech police are being assisted by numerous other jurisdictions including Montgomery County.

Montgomery County MD is 5+ hours by car from VA Tech, so this coordination is an interesting comment.

Major Update: This is turning out to be a horrific tragedy as now the death toll is heading over 30 people killed.

At least 29 people are dead in what may be the biggest mass shooting in American history — and the death toll may rise.

What every college across the country needs to know right now is this an isotated event or a hint of things to come.

Update: Sadly the death toll has now reached 32 as confirmed by the FBI. The fact MD officials and the FBI are involved means there could be a much broader situation at play here.

Update: Some reporting has the gunman as a young Asian looking for his girlfriend. Sadly, I would prefer this be a massacre of passion than one of terrorism.

Addendum: Some on the left are taking issue with my interest in the gunman’s religion and, clearly, whether he was motivated by Islamo Facsism. I have one daughter in a Southern VA College right now and family and friends with kids in just about every VA school there is, so excuse me for wanting to make sure, in this post 9-11 world, there is not something broader afoot. I recall watching the events unfold on 9-11 and how we all felt the first hit on the WTC was a plane accident. It tool a second hit for reality to sink in. I have no regrets in wanting to make sure this was an isolated incident and not al Qaeda’s latest attack plans. And those on the left who don’t get that too bad. No apologies here given the amount of death and carnage the Islamo Fascists have spread across the globe in the last 20 years. None.

Update: Some audio from a student who was shot and injured in Norris Hall with a description of the mayhem and shooter.

Update: Apparently from eyewitness reports here much of the campus wa shut down after the initial shooting in Ambler Johnson Hall. And from this report it seems the gunman went immediately from Ambler to Norris where police surrounded the man after an initial brief gun battle. Then the massacre started later around 10-10:30 AM. Clearly police did what they could to isolate and limit the destruction.

Update: Death toll is now 33. Campus authorities also made clear the earlier incident at Ambler Johnson which left two people dead was believed to be an isolated incident and that the shooter had left the campus. No more details on the shooter except he killed himself apparently. Too bad he did not think of that first.