Email warning came two hours after first shooting

This article was in on a UK website, that's why it says "yesterday"


Richard Adams in Washington
Tuesday April 17, 2007
Guardian Unlimited


Students stand in the doorway of McBryde Hall on the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg. Photograph: Matt Gentry/AP


A delay of more than two hours in warning students between two spates of killings in America's deadliest shooting spree may have contributed to the size of the death toll.


At a press conference last night, officials at Virginia Tech university were still insisting that the two shootings may not have been related, an account judged to be highly unlikely by experts. The Washington Post, quoting anonymous law enforcement sources, reported that a single gunman - who police say was not a student - was responsible for both incidents.

The call to police about the first shooting took place at 7.15am yesterday, followed by another call after the second shooting at 9.45am - but the first email warning sent to students from university authorities only came at 9.26am.

The email sent to 36,000 students and staff gave few details. It said: "A shooting incident occurred at West Amber Johnston earlier this morning. Police are on the scene and are investigating. The university community is urged to be cautious and are asked to contact Virginia Tech police if you observe anything suspicious or with information on the case."

It wasn't until later, at 9.55am, that a further email, warning students that a gunman was on the loose on the campus, was sent out, according to the university. It read: "A gunman is loose on campus. Stay in buildings until further notice. Stay away from all windows."

Laura Spaventa, a second-year undergraduate, told the Los Angeles Times she was disturbed that officials allowed classes to continue after the first shooting and did not close the school immediately. "I don't really understand that," she said. "I don't understand their logic behind that. It does bother me. I feel like a lot of lives could have been saved and a lot fewer injuries."

Investigating the first incident, campus police judged it to have been a domestic incident, with a man and a woman shot dead in a room in the West Ambler Johnston Hall, a dormitory housing around 900 students.
Over two hours later - after some students say they had been given an all-clear - a further round of shooting broke out on the other side of the campus at another building, Norris Hall, with video footage taken by students showing police approaching the building with the sound of gunshots ringing out, as students waved frantically, guiding the police towards the shooter.

According to eyewitness reports, the gunman roamed from room to room within the building, with suggestions that he had chained the doors to the dormitory locked. Several students jumped from upper storey windows in attempts to flee the scene, described by some as "utter chaos".

Trey Perkins, a student at Virginia Tech, was in a German class at Norris Hall with other students, when the gunman entered and shot several of them, including the professor present. The gunman then left the room, and Perkins and two other students barricaded the door with their bodies to stop the gunman re-entering. "We went up to the door and put our hands and our feet up against it. He started to come in the door again and he started shooting at the door, maybe four or five times. Fortunately none of us were hit," he told Fox News.

Perkins said the gunman said nothing: "He didn't say anything, he just came in and started shooting."

David Jenkins, another student, said a friend was in the building at the time of the shooting: "He was very fortunate. He said every single person in the room was shot, killed and was on the ground. He laid on the ground with everyone ... he played dead and he was OK." He said the gunman then moved on to other classrooms.

The result was America's deadliest shooting spree, with the death toll surpassing the 15 murdered at the University of Texas in Austen in 1966, and the 12 killed by their classmates at Columbine high school in Colorado.

The Virginia Tech president, Charles Steger, said 33 people were dead, including the gunman, who killed himself. Some 26 people were wounded and were receiving treatment at nearby hospitals. Police said only one gunman was involved, and that they were not looking for anyone else.

The campus police chief, Wendell Flinchum, said investigations following the first shooting centred on a male "person of interest" - who knew one of the victims - who was interviewed by the police. He said the police were still interviewing that person, but that he was not in custody or under arrest.

"I'm not saying there's someone still out there, I'm not saying they're not," he said.

The long gap between the two deadly shootings - with at least one dead at West Ambler Johnston Hall and many more in Norris Hall - in terms of time and distance, raises serious questions about how a lone gunman was able to slip past police and students.

"It's ridiculous. I was sitting in a classroom learning about heating glass, and in the next building people were being shot," said Jason Piatt, an engineering student at Virginia Tech.

The shootings took place on an unseasonably cold day, with flurries of snow swirling around the campus, which houses 26,000 students. Virginia Tech is best known for its science and engineering courses. The campus is about 250 miles from Washington DC.

The southern corner of the state that houses the university is rural and sparsely populated, and is a bastion of hunting. Gun ownership is often regarded as a fiercely defended right.

The shooting was the second to hit the university this academic year. In August two people, including a policeman, were killed near the campus. William Morva, a convict who had escaped custody at the time, faces murder charges over the two killings. The university has also received several bomb threats in recent weeks.

· Timeline: how events unfolded at Virginia Tech

7.15am Calls to 911 over shootings at West Ambler Johnston dormitory

8.25am Virginia Tech officials meet to discuss shooting

9am University officials briefed by campus police chief

9.26am First email notification sent to 36,000 staff and students

9.35am First gunshots heard at Norris Hall

9.45am Call to 911 over shootings at Norris Hall

9.55am Second email sent warning of gunman

10.14am Gunman thought to have committed suicide

10.16am Third email cancels classes and tells students to stay indoors, lock doors and close curtains

Damn... if this is true, could the second shootings (the majority), have been prevented?

Hm, had the police already high-tailed it out of there too? That's what I find funny; they obviously didn't think there was a lingering threat.

I mean, that's the beauty of hind-sight, you can always see so clearly... but at the time, the murders probably just seemed like they had focus of some sort; the shootings afterwards were obviously a rampage.

Though it did take them an hour to convene for a meeting, it was pretty early.

Like I said in one of the other threads, about the shootings... I'm wondering if it was a couple, and they (the cops) thought that it was a lovers triangle, and so didn't think that there would be an possible threat. *shrug*

Oh yeah, I remember reading that comment. It's definitely possible, you know? A couple of people die, you don't immediately think mass-murdering psycho. That's very rare.

Exactly. But, when something happens on a school campus, I would THINK that they would IMMEDIATELY cancel ALL classes, just as a precaution. Then again... had they done that, it's possible that the shooter would have come and finished off what he'd started another day.

When he went into the second building, he used chains, and a lock, and made it so the students couldn't get out... and the cops couldn't get in. This guy put serious thought into what he did today. And I'm sure that his plan was to off himself when he'd finished. He knew that he wasn't going to live. But, WHY couldn't he just have killed himself, and not taken out all of those innocent people?

I was thinking the same damn thing.

Someone gets fucking SHOT that's a big deal.

I was really, really angry.

But then I thought, even if they had cancelled classes, he still could have shot up the dorm, so really the only difference it made was where it took place, so it made my anger go away a bit.

Understandable...

It was a big deal... but, they couldn't foresee that it would turn into what it did.

But when there's a gunman on the loose you lock that shit down and call in the popo. That's some shit. They send out an e-mail? Like the entire student body is in front of their computer. I bet there is going to be some investigation into this shit once the dust settles.

-HECK!

The problem that is going to get the school in trouble, from what I'm hearing, is that there was some whacko that escaped from a phych ward, in Sept, near the campus, and the school went on lockdown. So, here we are, months later, and two students are killed ON the campus, and they don't go to a lockdown until the second shooting spree. They f'd up, big time. No one should have been going to classes yesterday, after the first shootings. The cops should have been CRAWLING all over that campus, and escorting people back to their dorms, apartments, etc...