Virginia Tech students say they didn't realize the extent of the massacre on their campus yesterday morning when a gunman opened fire in a dormitory and a classroom building, killing himself and 32 others.
Freshman David Burkhard heard about the dorm shooting, which occurred about 7:15 a.m., from a campus-wide e-mail sent about two hours later.
The e-mail mentioned a shooting had occurred
but no classes had been canceled, so he headed out for his 10 a.m. class.
When he reached the Drill Field, a grassy practice field that helps divide the academic and residential sides of campus, Burkhard realized something was wrong.
It was pretty obvious just because you could see every single student in sight was coming across the Drill Field from the academic side, he said.
Police said they were still investigating the shooting at the dorm, where two people were killed, when they got word of gunfire at the classroom building. There, wielding two pistols, the gunman fatally shot 30 more people before committing suicide.
Virginia Tech President Charles Steger said authorities believed that the shooting at the dorm was a domestic dispute and mistakenly thought the gunman had fled the campus. The gunman's name was not immediately released, and it was not known if he was a student. Investigators offered no motive for the attack.
At an evening news conference, campus police Chief Wendell Flinchum did not dismiss the possibility that a coconspirator or second shooter was involved. He said police had interviewed a person of interest in the dorm shooting who knew one of the victims.
News of the tragedy and the chaos that followed rippled quickly through the campus, which has 25,000 full-time students, and the surrounding town of Blacksburg, Va. By early afternoon, senior Monique Sno had been told that one of her friends had to step over a body as law enforcement officers escorted him out of the building.
Sno said she was shocked that the mass shooting occurred right here in our backyard.
Sophomore Amber Smith was leaving her first class yesterday as police ushered mobs of students toward the dormitories, away from the classroom shooting.
Smith said she learned later in the day that one friend had died and another was injured.
Witnesses reported students jumping out the windows of a classroom building to escape the gunfire, and SWAT team members swarmed the campus. Students and faculty members carried out some of the wounded. Some found themselves trapped behind chained doors.
Sophomore Trey Perkins told The Washington Post that the gunman, who looked about 19 years old and appeared calm, barged into his class at about 9:50 a.m., shot the professor in the head and then fired on the students for more than a minute.
Sophomore Chris Smith was about a football field-length away from the classroom building when he heard several loud bangs and saw law enforcement officials storming in. He said he was not sure whether the shots were from police or the gunman.
It was freaky hearing gunshots he said.
Virginia Tech reported on its Web site that there was never any engagement between the responding officers and the gunman.
Officials are working to identify victims and notify next of kin and will not release victims' names until that process is finished, according to Virginia Tech.
However, students and a Georgia coroner have identified Ryan Clark, a student from Martinez, Ga., as one of the victims.
Steger, the Virginia Tech president, called the shootings a monumental and incomprehensible
heinous act.
Ohio University President Roderick McDavis, who knows Steger and the school's provost well from his previous job at Virginia Commonwealth University, said he plans to contact the administrators soon.
The loss of life is never positive and certainly this is a tragedy beyond comprehension
he said.
The shooting yesterday took place almost eight years to the day after the Columbine High School massacre near Littleton, Colo., on April 20, 1999, when two teenagers killed 12 fellow students and a teacher before taking their own lives.
Until yesterday, the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history was in Killeen, Texas, in 1991, when George Hennard plowed his pickup truck into a Luby's Cafeteria and fatally shot 23 people, then himself.
' The Associated Press contributed to this story.
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