Here is the only news I can think about today.
THE DEADLIEST SHOOTING IN AMERICAN HISTORY.
Here is what is known, as far as I can tell:
- The gunman killed 32 people at Virginia Tech, then committed suicide:
- After shooting two people in a dormitory, he stormed a building called Norris Hall. After chaining the doors, he then killed 29 more.
- 15 people were hurt. Some were seriously injured. Student were jumping out of the windows in panic. The professor stayed behind, perhaps to try to block the gunman. He was killed, according to one student who escaped.
quote begins from The Huffington Post, Gunman Kills 32 in Virginia Tech Rampage]
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 about 30 shots.
The gunman 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," he said.
"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, that she was one of only four of about two dozen people in the class to walk out of the room. The rest were dead or wounded, she said.
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."
[quote ends]
quote begins from The Washington Post, 2 Hours of Terror at Virginia Tech]
One student told the Washington Post that the gunman, said to be about 19 years old, burst into the room and fired about 30 shots in just a minute a half _ first blasting a professor in the head, then shooting the students.
Planet Blacksburg _ a local, student-run Web site _ quoted Ruiqi Zhang, identified as a computer engineering student who said he was on the second floor of Norris.
"A student rushed in and told everybody to get down," Zhang said. "We put a table against the door and when the gunman tried to shoulder his way in and when he saw that he couldn't, he put two shots through the door. It was the scariest moment of my life."
The Web site also quoted Gene Cole, a building worker, as saying the shooter wore a hat and carried an automatic weapon. "He loaded his gun at me," Cole said. "I ran down the steps to get out of there."
It was eerily reminiscent of the shocking images from the shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado eight years ago this very week. And something else recalled some of the most shocking images of Sept. 11, 2001: Students jumping from windows to escape.
Virginia Tech sent out a third e-mail at 10:17 a.m. announcing classes were canceled and repeating the warning for everyone to lock their doors and stay away from windows.
By then, the magnitude of this bloody day was becoming increasingly clear.
Grim-faced TV anchors reported the rising death toll: 21, 31, then 33, including the shooter himself, not immediately identified. He put a bullet to his head. Two of the dead were shot at the dorm, the remainder at Norris Hall. Authorities also reported that 26 people were wounded, some seriously.
At 10:53 a.m. _ more than two-and-half hours after the terror began _ the announcement of the end of the worst mass shooting in U.S. history came in a fourth e-mail from the school.
[quote begins]
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