This morning, 33 were killed and at least 29 more were injured during shootings on the campus of Virginia Tech. The NY Times reports that it "appears to be the deadliest shooting rampage in American history."
According to CNN, two people were killed at a dorm around 7:15AM while 30 people were killed two hours later at the engineering and mechanics building, Norris Hall. Right now, it seems that there was one shooter, who killed himself, but authorities "are not ruling out a second shooter." Virginia Tech's classes have been canceled through Tuesday.
The university police chief Wendell Flinchum was asked why the campus wasn't shut down after the dorm shooting, and he responded, "it was an isolated event to that building and the decision was made not to cancel classes at that time...We had some reason to believe the shooter had left campus." Students were told to stay indoors and away from windows. WTKR reports that VT students received a warning email about the shooting two hours after the dorm shooting "by which time the gunman had struck again." A student who lives in the dorm the first shooting took place told WTKR, "They had us under lockdown. They temporarily lifted the lockdown, the gunman shot again."
The shooter's self-inflicted head wounds have prevented law enforcement officials from immediately identifying him (he was not carrying ID either). The Times reported that the authorities were trying to trace where the guns were from. We bet that if the guns are found to be illegal, Mayor Bloomberg, whose campaign against illegal guns has made him a "fierce and slightly insane"-looking cover subject for the NRA's magazine, will speak out about the shooting.
Update: Via the NY Times The Lede blog, "The lone gunman at Norris Hall was male, and he took his own life" and “'State of emergency' is declared by governor." Also, extensive coverage from the Roanoke Times.
Update 9PM: Students have been speaking to the media this past evening. Some told stories about escaping Norris Hall, some thought that the gunfire was construction at first. Trey Perkins, student who spoke to evening news outlets, said the shooter "didn’t look frightened at all, he didn’t look angry. Just a straight face.” Another student, Erin Sheehan, told VT's student newspaper the Collegiate Times, "He was just a normal looking kid, Asian, but he had on a Boy Scout type outfit. He wore a tan button up vest, and this black vest, maybe it was for ammo or something.” The authorities have not confirmed the ethnicity of the shooter, but have reportedly "preliminarily identified" him. Additionally, now it seems that the authorities are not ruling out a second shooter. From the Collegiate Times:
Virginia Tech police chief Wendell Flinchum said that there has been a preliminary identification of the shooter in the incident that took place in Norris Hall but would not definitively state whether the shooter was the same as the one that left two dead in West Ambler Johnston Hall. Flinchum back-tracked from his statement that the description Ambler Johnson Hall shooter did not match the description of the Norris Hall shooter, leaving it unclear as to whether police were actively pursuing a second suspect in the case.
Flinchum said that police were pursuing an additional "person of interest" but would give a description.
Two weapons were recovered, but police were not prepared to release their make or model, Flinchum said.
The question that keeps being asked: why wasn't the campus locked down after the first shooting.
Photograph of a SWAT team on the Virginia Tech campus by Steve Helber/AP
