It was the deadliest campus shooting ever. I can't believe this happened!!!. My prayers go out to the families of the deceased. What is wrong with people nowadays???. WTF!!!!. Mark:wtc:
Earlier Guess: I'm gonna guess it's a high school senior who only applied to VA.Tech and didn't get in. I'm also gonna say that it's a Male and probably Caucasian. I'm purely basing this on the time of the year (april, when all the acceptance/deny letters are already sent out) and the school (engineering school). New Facts from MSNBC: The gunman is in his 20's, Asian, and is dead. Not sure if he committed suicide or the police shot him.
I just saw this on yahoo, wtf. At least I don't go to a super stressful engineering school similar to VT...oh wait.
looks like I jumped in the wrong direction. man, way off. I can't even imagine how the families will feel :wtc: when they are notified.
You racist pig. (Some reports said it was an asian guy wearing a vest packed with ammo... but we'll see)
Some are now reporting 32 dead. The shooter is reportedly asian with a black leather jacket and a maroon (probably VT) baseball cap. I freaked out when I turned on the news in the middle of a broadcast: "Tech on lockdown after a fatal shooting, more reports coming in." Me at Georgia Tech is going like :eek3: . It's still such a horrible tragedy, and I'm praying for everybody involved.
Wife's friend is a prof. at Va Tech, she was fine, but said it was (obviously)really scary being on campus...and they are now confirming 31 dead....
You have to be a good shot and lucky to take people out with a .22, doubt that's true. Then again, media screws this stuff up all the time... when the VA snipers were out they said the rifle was a '.22' when it was a .223... minor difference there.
Hopefully we will hear the facts soon...It still seems like they are trying to compile evidence and get the story straight..... Mark
I heard 2 glock 17's with plenty of clips and an ak47...no doubt it was premeditated new fact - largest shooting in US history
They don't know at this time. Undoubtedly the two in the residence hall are students, and I'm sure that in the Engineering Hall was a mix of students and teachers. I almost went to Virginia Tech for Engineering, makes me sick to my stomach.
Blacksburg, VA is a nice little college town that I liked visiting in the early 90's when I'd go see friends who went to school there, and I hate that the school and the town are now going to be infamous for todays events. I find it nauseatingly amazing what level of destruction and pain a motivated and deranged person with two firearms can cause. Since carry permits for students aren't a legal option I hope that schools and businesses better staff, train, and equip their campus police and security personnel in the near future.
It is definitely an awful situation, but I don't entirely agree with you on the aspect of campus police (well, training is never bad). But hey, shit happens. I don't think you can pin anyones death on a lack of response from the campus police. And I think that if a person is motivated enough, nothing short of a military siege could stop them from going on a killing spree. I can tell you that there are multiple lecture halls at Georgia Tech (and any other major university) that a psychopath could go in, guns blazing and take out a similar number of people. That doesn't mean that I want security in every one of my classes. Sometimes horrible events just happen, and it's no ones fault except the perpetrator. It is somewhat odd that the two incidents were able to occur so far apart and by aparently the same shooter, but not enough of the story has really been released yet to come to any conclusions about it. I only know two things about such an event, hindsight is 20/20, and I don't want one asshole altering the way I live my life..
This could have easily happened at any other school, be it UGA, GT, Clemson or Auburn. No campus police force could have changed what happened, and like you said students carrying on campus just isn't an option. College life is amazing, but it is also a trying and troublesome time for many students. Even with good intentions, college students carrying on campus is just setting up for trouble. It's sad to say but if somebody is motivated enough to do something like this, there's not much anybody can do except respond immediately, which it seems like the VT police did.
I am wondering how someone toting firearms and wearing a vest of clips could wander a campus for that long. Time will tell. It' just irritating to think that the students and faculty who abided by laws and campus rules and didn't bring firearms onto campus ended up in a vulnerable position, and that authorities weren't able to save more lives in this situation.
Heres what I have been hearing. Apparently he found is ex(or possibly non ex) girlfriend in bed with another guy. He shot them both killing him there, and she died later. This was the first shooting. Around 2hrs late he opens up in the engineering part of the school. Apparently he walked in one class room at one point, then walked, out the students then barred the door. When he couldn't get back in he blindly fired at the door injuring people behind it.(this is where the cell phone video came from, on cnn, etc) Meanwhile he finished his rampage, before taking his own life. Really sad event to see happen. I still don't understand why the whole school was not locked down, and classes canceled after the first shooting. They better have some funds as they are about to get sued life effing crazy.
They thought it was an isolated event and that he fled campus. I'm not sure it's a viable excuse, but like I said earlier, hindsight is 20/20. People can say they should of done this or that for just about any event, but they weren't there. I'm not really trying to defend anyone here, things could have been handeled better without a doubt. I just don't like how blame gets transferred to others when it wasn't their fault at all. It was one guy out of his fucking mind.
There's a vigil being held at the ferst center on GT campus to honor our sister acc school's loss tomorrow at 1pm i think.
They just announced the identity of the killer. "Police identified the shooter as Cho Seung-Hui, 23, a senior from South Korea who was in the English department at Virginia Tech and lived on campus."
Bingo...... but everybody wants a scapegoat, a physical manifestation of emotional closure maybe, and since numbnuts killed himself they're gonna start at the bottom and work their way up...... university staff, local cops, campus police, etc..... heads will roll for sure, but will it be necessary? I don't know that anyone has enough information right now to say for sure..... But you have a 2,600 acre campus and what, 25,000 students? Almost half of whom commute in...... that's gotta be a tough place to button up, especially when the information you're working with at that moment in time doesn't immediately lead you to suspect an active shooter scenario..... I'm not saying that they made all the right decisions, I just don't necessarily agree with many of the people on the news who are so quick to criticize despite the fact that they are operating on partial information...... the "bandwagon" so to speak...... Impending witchhunt aside, the incident itself was a great tragedy for those involved, as well as their loved ones...... sad times we're living in...... my prayers to the victims and families affected.....
The shooter is from Centreville,VA which is only 45 minutes south of my hometown Bethesda. The guy looked like a friggin 12 year old punk. Mark
Couldn't have said it better myself! As a disaster planner for Public Health, we sit around and think up scenarios and ways to prevent or mitigate the effects of events they may impact public health, all day. We look at what happened in previous events, we write plans with multi-agency/multi-jursidicitional working groups, we test the plans through training and exercising, and ya know what, all that does is help us be better prepared. The real events ALWAYS throw us something unexpected. There are far too many variables in the real world to reduce risk to zero. Our grandparents understood that fact. We have become a society that wants everything our way and right now. We don't want to make the concessions necessary to prevent these types of events (trust me, no one on here would want to go through what would make it so that these types of things can't happen). I promise you, the last people on the face of this earth that wanted this to happen were the public safety personnel on the VA Tech campus. By all accounts they have a very good police department. Shutting down campus likely would have cost thousands of dollars, took more time than the two hours and would have elicited endless complaints from students, parents, and staff. Would they shut it down today if they could do it over again? Sure. But, that doesn't mean they made a "wrong" decision yesterday. Hindsight is indeed 20/20. In a free and open society, we expose ourselves to risk. Its part of being free, its part of living life.
That is a really commendable thing to do. I wish that I could be there to participate. Times like this we just need to pray for the families and students. Very tragic and sad event that will be remembered forever..... Mark