Apr 16 2007
VA Tech Shootings
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.
*UPDATE* Reported Multiple Deaths in Virginia Tech Shooting…
Classes have been canceled today as a scary situation develops in Blacksburg:Shootings in a dorm and classroom at Virginia Tech left at least one person dead and seven or eight more wounded Monday before police arrested the suspected gunman, officials…
Time for a Prayer…
This is a tragedy of the utmost proportion. Prayers are offered to the families of those taken from them in such a senseless fashion.
Police: 22 Dead After Virginia Tech University Shooting
Read the story here.
Update: AJ Strata is a graduate of …
This Just Makes You Want To Home School Your Kids Forever…
What is it with April and deadly school shootings?
…
A shooting happens at 7:15 where there are deaths and classes are not cancelled? Students are only notified by email? Once student told FNC that she did not know there had been murders as she was only told in her 9:00 a.m. class that there had been an “incident” at a dorm.
WTF is going on? Why wern’t classes immediately cancelled and student notified to stay away? Why did the administration allow classes to continue when they already had dead students?
R05,
VA Tech is enormous and there are ‘incidents’ sadly quite regularly. A fight or stabbing breaking out is not going to initially close the campus. Don’t fault the school for not realizing after the initial shooting they had a madman on their hands.
AJ, give me a break. You have a student murdered by a nut case, who is now on the loose and you don’t shut the damn school down? This was not some lunatic sitting on top of a tower taking potshot at people below. This was a person wandering around campus with weapons with total access to the buildings.
And yes, I do fault the school. After Columbine, school administrators shoud err on the side of caution, not pre-determine that the first killing was just an isolated incident and allow students to go their merry ways.
My brother was at UT when Whitman went nuts. He was a classmate of Whitman’s. When the first shots came, classrooms were locked down, SWAT teams were on campus within minutes, and the police started clearing the Congress Avenue immediately making shop owners lock their doors and keep people inside.
So to tell me that almost three hours later classes are still going on and you don’t have a problem with that is just plain nuts.
You have shootings all the time near and in schools R05 – read the papers more. One shooting is not going to close down any school in the nation. Sorry you don’t like the answer – but the world is that violent.
BTW, where do you get off claiming I am OK with this? Do NOT respond if you wish to comment on this site. You are on thin ice with me right now.
If there is going to be any blame for this senseless act it will come from the families whose lives are forever changed today.
As a parent I cannot imagine the horror they must have felt at the initial news and are feeling now.
Thanks AJ for all the updates.
The simple fact is that you can’t run a school like it is a penitentiary. What about other places like malls and downtown shopping districts? We can not turn every single public place into a prison.
I wish there was some way to make it illegal to report these stories or at least limit their reporting of them. It is this very news reporting that acts as the enabler for this kind of crime. The fact that we are even talking about this nut means that he accomplished what he set out to do … he got everyone in the world’s attention.
Now someone else is going to see this and in a year or two or five or ten go for their day of fame.
Multiple Shootings at Virginia Tech…
***See Updates***
This story is unfolding, but it appears there is more than one shooter involved….
IIRC, Blacksburg is located in Montgomery Co., Virginia….an awful lot of names got reused in those days.
AJ, where did I say you were OK with this? 32 people are dead. Am I not allowed to question why students were not locked down? Why a murder was allowed to roam campus for 2 3/4 hours?
So, I you wish to do the Al Sharpton act and try to stop me from posting here, well, all I can say is it is your blog and you are free to do what you will. You have already shown that you object to any opinion that does not agree with you.
But I am angry. DAMN ANGRY.
BTW, I don’t take to threats lightly. Perhaps Va Tech should adopt that philosophy.
Read your posts R05, and stop lashing out at me or I will ban you for my peace of mind. Not because I am Al Sharpton. That was your one freebie – one more childish remark and I will definitely go for the pece of mind option.
Mike M!
You know I forgot the was Montgomery County VA! Clearly I am from Northern VA!
As for what the leadership at Virginia Tech should have done, I’m of two opinions.
On the one hand, it is poor headwork to know that you have a killing in one of the dorms and tell the students to just go about their business. if nothing else, you are providing a hostage-rich environment.
On the other hand, this IS a college. Not, repeat NOT, a grade or high school. The students are presumed to have a certain degree of maturity and self-sufficiency, and not to require the coddling that we give to schoolchildren.
BTW, I think that is one of the features of this business that bothers me the most….this is NOT a “school shooting”. It is a “college shooting”. Very different venues.
I re-read my posts, AJ. I said I faulted the school. Not you.
What I did say is that you should have a problem with the fact that students were not immediately locked down.
For God’s sake, AJ, 32 people are dead and this guy roamed the campus for two hours. Now some students are saying he chained the doors closed. Students are reporting that they were sent emails of an “isolated incident”. Is that how campus authorities react to a murder calling it an “isolated incident”? Most of the students being interviewed on FNC are saying they did not read their emails this morning.
I’m sorry if I upset your peace of mind. How do you think my family felt sitting by the radio all day wondering if my brother was one of the dead from the Tower sniper? They were both engineering students. For me, this is deja vu.
I have a kid at a southern VA school R05, your outbursts are not defendable.
AJ & R05: alright, BOTH of you calm down!
32 people have been massacred, students, on their way to class; no “normal” American, can be happy about this.
Right now, there are a lot of facts that all of us don’t know, and R05, you know, as well as I, 95% of what you hear, about a “combat situation”, in the first hours, is bogus anyway!
I don’t know why the school didn’t shut down after the first incident; I don’t know, I don’t have the answers, and I can’t even speculate; but right now, I can’t “blame” either; don’t know enough to do so.
That will come later; it will be found out, and it will be published, then we can excoriate, IF it needs to be done.
But you two, going after each other, right now, is not accomplishing anything, for anyone.
Besides, I value both of your opinions, and I don’t want either of you saying/doing something, that you regret later.
R/dale
Breaking- Gunman kills 21 32 and wounds 21 28 more at Virginia Tech (UPDATED)…
***BUMPED TO TOP***
Roanoke Times has continuous updates and eye witness accounts.
MORE: HotAir has running updates including this from a Va. Tech student:
Just got this from a reader who says it was posted on his VTech frat listserv. Grain of salt:
Z…