April 16, 2007 — In the wake of this morning's tragedy at Virginia Tech, some students are questioning some of the school's actions — why the college's administration did not cancel classes after the first shooting and why it took over two hours to inform students via email about the shootings.

The unidentified gunman shot and killed two students at 7:15 a.m. at the West Ambler Johnston Hall dormitory and took as long as two hours before killing at least 30 other students sometime after 9 a.m. at Norris Hall, an academic building across campus.

Because classes don't start until 8 a.m., some students felt that cancelling classes would have helped avert further tragedy by alerting students of the need to leave campus or to find a secure place.

At 10:04, students were told to stay indoors and away from windows. Classes were not cancelled until 10:20.

"I do feel strongly that they should have cancelled classes — if you have a shooting on campus, you should cancel classes right away," Bradford Wiles, a 33-year-old graduate student at VT who was not on campus this morning, told ABCNews.com. "For two hours, they said the gunman had been subdued and let the campus believe that it was safe."

Another student posted a message on Facebook under the username Greg Hair:

"They could have prevented most of this…shooting at 730 in WAJ, classes don't start til 8, why couldn't they cancel classes for the day … SOMEONE WAS SHOT AND IT TURNS OUT THEY DIED … I THINK THATS GROUNDS TO CANCEL CLASS RATHER THAN SENDING OUT AN EMAIL THAT SAYS USE CAUTION AND REPORT ANYTHING TO POLICE. They could have save almost 20 lives and 20 injuries if they just decided to cancel class right away."

In an e-mail to ABCNews.com, Greg Hair added to his sentiments, "Apparently, they didnt think he was a 'suicidal maniac' so they didn't feel the need to cancel classes."

At 9:26, more than two hours after the first incident, students received an e-mail informing them of the first shooting and urging them to take caution and contact campus police if they observed any suspicious activity.

That is when Alexandra Mengel, a 19-year-old freshman, first received the campus e-mail. She was getting ready for her 10:10 a.m. Communications Skills class at McBride Hall, right next door to Norris Hall. Leaving the building, she was quickly escorted by Blacksburg police officers to take cover with about 20 other students at West Ambler Johnston Hall.

"I have no idea why they didn't cancel classes," says Mengel. "If I had known of the urgency, I would have been more cautious. You would think that when a killer is on the loose, that there would have been more warning." Some students who received the e-mails didn't realize the gravity of the situation.

"I got the e-mails, but my impression was it was [a] prank or nothing serious, hadn't heard anyone was apprehended or actual bombs were found," says Josh Wargo, an engineering student at the school.

ABC News

At this point, and knowing only what I have seen and heard on Television, I would have to say that the police acted accordingly with the information they had at the time..... Of course hindsight is a great eye opener.....

They were reacting to the first incident as if was a domestic situation.... perhaps a love triangle, nothing like a terrorist act.... and that maybe they had a murderer in the area, but this alone should not cause administration to shut down a 36,000 student campus....  Yes alert all possible and as soon as possible to be cautious that there is the possibility of a murderer being in the vicinity, but not lock down the entire campus....

As I would say to all the 'Monday Morning Quarterbacks' ...   Hindsight is great..... but unfortunately we do not have that option at human disposal.

Prayers go out to all those affected by this tragedy.

Quote:Gunman kills 32 in Virginia Tech rampage

BLACKSBURG, Va. - A gunman massacred 32 people at Virginia Tech in the deadliest shooting rampage in modern U.S. history Monday, cutting down his victims in two attacks two hours apart before the university could grasp what was happening and get the warning out to students.

The bloodbath ended with the gunman committing suicide, bringing the death toll to 33 and stamping the campus in the picturesque Blue Ridge Mountains with unspeakable tragedy, perhaps forever.

Investigators gave no motive for the attack. The gunman's name was not immediately released, and it was not known if he was a student.

"Today the university was struck with a tragedy that we consider of monumental proportions," Virginia Tech President Charles Steger said. "The university is shocked and indeed horrified."

But he was also faced with difficult questions about the university's handling of the emergency and whether it did enough to warn students and protect them after the first burst of gunfire. Some students bitterly complained they got no warning from the university until an e-mail that arrived more than two hours after the first shots rang out.

Wielding two handguns and carrying multiple clips of ammunition, the killer opened fire about 7:15 a.m. on the fourth floor of West Ambler Johnston, a high-rise coed dormitory, then stormed Norris Hall, a classroom building a half-mile away on the other side of the 2,600-acre campus. Some of the doors at Norris Hall were found chained from the inside, apparently by the gunman.

Two people died in a dorm room, and 31 others were killed in Norris Hall, including the gunman, who put a bullet in his head. At least 15 people were hurt, some seriously.

Students jumped from windows in panic. Young people and faculty members carried out some of the wounded themselves, without waiting for ambulances to arrive. Many found themselves trapped behind the chained and padlocked doors. SWAT team members with helmets, flak jackets and assault rifles swarmed over the campus. A student used his cell-phone camera to record the sound of bullets echoing through a stone building.

Trey Perkins, who was sitting in a German class in Norris Hall, told The Washington Post that the gunman barged into the room at about 9:50 a.m. and opened fire for about a minute and a half, squeezing off 30 shots in all.

The gunman, Perkins said, first shot the professor in the head and then fired on the students. Perkins said the gunman was about 19 years old and had a "very serious but very calm look on his face."

"Everyone hit the floor at that moment," said Perkins, 20, of Yorktown, Va., a sophomore studying mechanical engineering. "And the shots seemed like it lasted forever."

Erin Sheehan, who was also in the German class, told the student newspaper, the Collegiate Times, said she was one of only four of the approximately two dozen people in the class to walk out of the room. The rest were dead or wounded, she said.

"It seemed so strange," Sheehan said. The gunman "peeked in twice, earlier in the lesson, like he was looking for someone, somebody, before he started shooting. But then we all heard something like drilling in the walls, and someone thought they sounded like bullets. That's when we blockaded the door to stop anyone from coming in."

She said the gunman "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."

"I saw bullets hit people's body," Sheehan said. "There was blood everywhere." She added, "My professor, Herr Bishop, I'm not sure if he's alive."

Students said that there were no public-address announcements on campus after the first shots. Many said they learned of the first shooting in an e-mail that arrived shortly before the gunman struck again.

"I think the university has blood on their hands because of their lack of action after the first incident," said Billy Bason, 18, who lives on the seventh floor of the dorm.

"If you had apprehended a suspect, I could understand having classes even after two of your students have perished. But when you don't have a suspect in a college environment and to put the students in a situation where they're congregated in large numbers in open buildings, that's unacceptable to me."

Steger defended the university's handling of the tragedy, saying authorities believed that the shooting at the dorm was a domestic dispute and mistakenly thought the gunman had fled the campus.

"We had no reason to suspect any other incident was going to occur," he said.

Steger emphasized that the university closed off the dorm after the first attack and decided to rely on e-mail and other electronic means to notify members of the university, but with 11,000 people driving onto campus first thing in the morning, it was difficult to get the word out.

He said that before the e-mail went out, the university began telephoning resident advisers in the dorms to notify them and sent people to knock on doors to spread the word. Students were warned to stay inside and away from the windows.

"We can only make decisions based on the information you had at the time. You don't have hours to reflect on it," Steger said.

Some students and Laura Wedin, a student programs manager at Virginia Tech, said the first notification they got of the shootings came in an e-mail at 9:26 a.m., more than two hours after the first shooting.

The e-mail had few details. It read: "A shooting incident occurred at West Amber Johnston earlier this morning. Police are on the scene and are investigating." The message warned students to be cautious and contact police about anything suspicious.

Everett Good, junior, said of the lack of warning: "Someone's head is definitely going to roll over that."

Edmund Henneke, associate dean of engineering, said he was in the classroom building and he and colleagues had just read the e-mail advisory regarding the first shooting and were discussing it when he heard gunfire. He said moments later SWAT team members rushed them downstairs, but the doors were chained and padlocked from the inside. They left the building through a construction area that had not been locked.

Until Monday, the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history was in Killeen, Texas, in 1991, when George Hennard plowed his pickup truck into a Luby's Cafeteria and shot 23 people to death, then himself.

The massacre Monday took place almost eight years to the day after the Columbine High bloodbath near Littleton, Colo. On April 20, 1999, two teenagers killed 12 fellow students and a teacher before taking their own lives.

Previously, the deadliest campus shooting in U.S. history was a rampage that took place in 1966 at the University of Texas at Austin, where Charles Whitman climbed the clock tower and opened fire with a rifle from the 28th-floor observation deck. He killed 16 people before he was shot to death by police.

Founded in 1872, Virginia Tech is nestled in southwestern Virginia, about 160 miles west of Richmond. With more than 25,000 full-time students, it has the state's largest full-time student population. The school is best known for its engineering school and its powerhouse Hokies football team.

The rampage took place on a brisk spring day, with snow flurries swirling around the campus. The campus is centered around the Drill Field, a grassy field where military cadets — who now represent a fraction of the student body — practice. The dorm and the classroom building are on opposites sides of the Drill Field.

A White House spokesman said President Bush was horrified by the rampage and offered his prayers to the victims and the people of Virginia. "The president believes that there is a right for people to bear arms, but that all laws must be followed," spokeswoman Dana Perino said

After the shootings, all entrances to the campus were closed, and classes were canceled through Tuesday. The university set up a meeting place for families to reunite with their children. It also made counselors available and planned an assembly for Tuesday at the basketball arena.

It was second time in less than a year that the campus was closed because of a shooting.

Last August, the opening day of classes was canceled and the campus closed when an escaped jail inmate allegedly killed a hospital guard off campus and fled to the Tech area. A sheriff's deputy involved in the manhunt was killed on a trail just off campus. The accused gunman, William Morva, faces capital murder charges.

After Monday's shooting, students dragging suitcases and shouldering backpacks streamed from the gray granite dormitory.

Chaille Godinez, an 18-year-old freshman from New Jersey was heading with nine others to a friend's house 30 miles away in Roanoke.

"None of us really want to stay here tonight," Godinez said. "I will come back, I won't be happy about staying in my room knowing something happened three floors above me."

Yahoo news April 17, 2007
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It seems hard to understand though what the police were doing for those two hours between the killings? Were they searching for the killer or what?

On a longer term basis, will the US tighten up it`s notoriously lax gun laws, or will they continue to cry out that it`s every citizen`s `right` to bear arms. Apparently an average of 10 kids die every day because of getting hold of weapons, often their parents.