A Virginia Tech senior shot and killed at least 32 people on the Blacksburg, Va. campus and then killed himself yesterday in what has become the deadliest shooting in U.S. history, police say.
Cho Seung-Hui, 23, killed two people in a residence hall around 7:15 a.m. and killed 30 others in an engineering classroom building half a mile away around 9:15 a.m. As of last night, 15 victims were being treated at area hospitals.
The university did not send emails to the community until 9:26 a.m., when it stated a shooting had occurred at the West Ambler Johnston residence hall earlier in the morning, according to the emails obtained by The Daily Free Press.
At a press conference yesterday, reporters pressed Virginia Tech President Charles Steger and the university’s police chief, Wendell Flinchum, about the university’s lockdown policy and why it did not immediately send emails after the first shots were reported.
“We had no reason to expect any other incident was going to occur,” Steger said at the press conference.
A second email was sent less than a half hour after the first, urging those on campus to remain indoors.
“A gunman is loose on campus. Stay in buildings until further notice. Stay away from all windows,” read the email sent by Virginia Tech University Relations at 9:50 a.m.
Within the next hour, two more emails were sent, notifying the university all classes had been canceled and there was a “multiple shooting with multiple victims” in Norris Hall, the site of the second shooting.
Witnesses reported students jumping out of windows to escape Norris Hall, where Cho, an international student from South Korea, had chained doors shut to block people from leaving.
Before yesterday’s attacks, the deadliest shooting in U.S. history took place in Killeen, Texas, in 1991, when George Hennard killed 23 people and took his own life at a restaurant. The deadliest school shooting had occurred at the University of Texas at Austin, when Charles Whitman, a former U.S. Marine, killed 16 people with a sniper rifle from the 28th floor of an observation deck before police shot him.
The Virginia Tech shootings happened almost eight years to the date of the massacre April 20, 1999 at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., where 12 students and a teacher were killed and more than 20 were wounded by two classmates who then committed suicide.
In the aftermath of the Virginia Tech shootings, Thomas Robbins, chief of the Boston University Police Department, said he is meeting with Dean of Students Kenneth Elmore, Administrative Services Vice President Peter Fiedler and resident assistants to prepare a statement to be released today that will “assure our community as much as we can that we are a safe environment.”
In the event of a campus shooting, BUPD officers are trained to “contain and isolate an individual” by securing a building, moving people out of the “danger zone” and sending a group of three or four officers to each room to find the shooter, Robbins said.
“Unfortunately, we have trained since Columbine,” he said. “We do train for this, but you just pray that it never happens in your community.”
“One of the lessons that we learned from Columbine is that there was a lack of interoperability between departments,” said BUPD Sgt. Jack St. Hilaire.
BU’s statement will remind members of the community to “look after each other,” Elmore said, adding the university will offer counseling services similar to when the BU community loses one of its own. A candlelight vigil will be held today at noon in Marsh Chapel.
“We as a campus community are sympathetic to this,” Elmore said. “We’re even empathetic to this, as we see tragedy ourselves.”
He added, “It’s surreal, but it is absolutely devastating.”
Staff reporter Andrew FitzGerald contributing reporting for this article.