April 18, 2007

• Today’s Papers, Virginia Tech Shooting,Cho Seung-Hu,On Line Information on Shootings, Governor Corzi

  Corzine’s Speed Put at 91 M.P.H. Near Crash Site Douglas M. Bovitt/The Courier-Post, via Bloomberg News Gov. Jon S. Corzine’s sport utility vehicle after the accident on Thursday April 18, 2007 Corzine’s Speed Put at 91 M.P.H. Near Crash Site By DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI CAMDEN, N.J., April 17 — In the seconds before Gov. Jon S. Corzine was critically injured in an accident last Thursday, the Chevrolet Suburban he was riding in was traveling 91 miles per hour, 26 m.p.h. over the posted speed limit, according to a crash data recorder retrieved from the vehicle. The superintendent of the state police, Col. Joseph R. Fuentes, said Tuesday that the trooper driving the vehicle, Robert J. Rasinski, had told investigators that he did not know how fast he was traveling as he led Mr. Corzine’s two-car caravan, emergency lights flashing, from an Atlantic City speech to a meeting at the governor’s mansion in Princeton. But the recorder clocked the speed at 91 m.p.h. five seconds before the Suburban collided with a white pickup truck, and at 30 m.p.h. when it slammed into a guardrail along the shoulder of the Garden State Parkway, the police said. Mr. Corzine, who was not wearing a seat belt, was thrown from the front passenger seat to the back, breaking his thigh bone in two places, a dozen ribs, his breastbone and collarbone and a lower vertebra. He remains in critical condition and on a ventilator after three operations on his leg. Colonel Fuentes said that troopers who drive the governor and other state officials are given discretion to use the emergency lights and exceed the speed limit in cases of an emergency and, because of security concerns, are advised not to let the governor’s vehicle remain “bogged down in a traffic jam.” But “if it’s a nonemergency situation, we would ask them to obey the traffic laws and the speed laws,” Colonel Fuentes said in a late-afternoon conference call with reporters. The governor was en route to a meeting with Don Imus and members of the Rutgers women’s basketball team. In New York State, the law allows emergency vehicles to speed if they are involved in an emergency operation, but does not extend that right to elected officials. In New York City, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg ordered sirens and lights removed from cars belonging to 250 city officials in 2004, after one of his deputy mayors was repeatedly caught on camera in her official sedan, flashing its lights and blaring its siren to get home quickly from work. Eugene O’Donnell, a professor of police studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said that speed might be justified for a governor racing to respond to a natural disaster, but that “an elected official trying to get a routine appointment would certainly be out of the scope of an emergency definition.” Colonel Fuentes said he had asked the state’s accident review board to study the crash and whether additional training was required for the governor’s drivers. He has also asked the state attorney general to convene a special group to “undertake a critical review” of the state police executive protection unit that drives state officials, including Mr. Corzine. The results of the accident investigation contradict the original account the state police gave in the first 24 hours. Colonel Fuentes himself said Thursday night that “speed was not a factor” in the accident. When asked Tuesday whether he now believed that speed played a role in the accident, Colonel Fuentes replied: “What do you think?” “Speed is always a contributing factor in any accident,” he added later. “It goes to the heart of what damage you may have on the vehicle.” The crash occurred at Mile Marker 43.4, about 75 miles from Drumthwacket, the governor’s mansion, at 6:15 p.m. Aides to the governor said they did not know what time the meeting at the mansion was scheduled, but the Rutgers team arrived at 7:45, and Mr. Imus before that. The police and other state officials also originally said the accident was caused by the erratic or out-of-control movements of a red pickup truck, whose driver, Kenneth Potts of Little Egg Harbor, N.J., was identified on Saturday but not charged. It now seems clear that Mr. Corzine’s own vehicle was responsible for the crash: the pickup trucks were pulling over to the right to make way for the speeding motorcade, and when Mr. Potts swerved left from the shoulder to avoid hitting a signpost, the white pickup swerved to avoid hitting him, but collided with the Suburban. On Tuesday, the police said that Mr. Potts and the driver of the white truck, John M. Carrino Jr. of Glenwood, N.J., had both acted appropriately. Trooper Rasinski, who was wearing his seat belt, suffered minor injuries and was expected to return to duty when cleared by his doctors. At the trooper’s home in Point Pleasant on Tuesday night, a man who answered the door would not identify himself and said “there is no comment at this time.” The passenger in the backseat of the Suburban, Mr. Corzine’s aide Samantha Gordon, was also not wearing a seat belt, according to the police investigation. She walked away from the accident and has declined to discuss it with reporters. With witness statements and the findings from the crash data recorder, the investigation on Tuesday offered the most detailed account to date of last Thursday’s events. After the white pickup truck collided with the governor’s vehicle, Trooper Rasinski lost control of the Suburban and it careered toward the wooded center median, investigators found. As Trooper Rasinski tried to steer away from the woods, the Suburban slid clockwise from the paved roadway and shoulder, and the passenger side collided with the end of a steel guardrail. The guardrail sliced into the passenger compartment, just in front of where Mr. Corzine’s legs would have been, and narrowly missed both the governor and the trooper as the Suburban spun and came to rest with its back portion on top of the guardrail. Although the impact was on the passenger side, the only airbag to deploy was the side curtain bag between Trooper Rasinski and the driver’s-side door, according to Capt. Al Della Fave, a State Police spokesman. It was unclear whether the passenger side airbags had been disabled. The speed limit on New Jersey highways was raised to 65 from 55 in 1998. Governor Corzine floated the idea of lowering it last year as part of an environmental package, but quickly dropped the idea in the face of public opposition. The police had hoped to complete the investigation early this week, but are waiting to interview Governor Corzine, who is unable to speak because he is heavily sedated and has breathing and feeding tubes in his throat. After completing the third operation on Mr. Corzine’s leg wound on Monday, doctors said they wanted to remove the breathing tube within a day to reduce the chance that Mr. Corzine might be exposed to pneumonia or other potentially life-threatening infections. Late Tuesday, however, Mr. Corzine’s staff said that doctors had decided not to remove the tube yet, without providing any information as to why. Anthony Coley, Mr. Corzine’s communications director, said that Mr. Corzine “was showing improvement from a respiratory perspective” and was able to respond to doctors’ questions by nodding. Reporting was contributed by Ken Belson and Cara Buckley in New York, David W. Chen in Trenton, and Nate Schweber in Camden and Point Pleasant, N.J. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

  Campus Goes Online April 17, 2007 Campus Goes Online for Information and Comfort By SARAH WHEATON For the Virginia Tech community, changing information created emotional roller coasters both during and after Monday’s attack by a gunman who killed 32 people and then himself. Initial warnings of caution belied the ultimate massacre. Likewise, the search for missing people left friends and loved ones relying on gossip and speculation. Fueled by technology, the level of available information — just enough to cause fear, but not enough to really know — has been contributing to both false hope and unnecessary anguish among those involved. Lauren McCain, a freshman majoring in international studies, according to her MySpace profile, was among those unaccounted for in the immediate wake of the shootings. Her friends’ efforts to figure out what happened to her are heart-wrenching, and outsiders can go along for the rollercoaster ride, eavesdropping through Facebook and other forums. Courtney Treon, a high school student, started a thread within a Facebook group called Prayers for VT” asking for “any kind of information on Lauren McCain.” Posting at around 11 p.m. on Monday, she added, “It is believed that she was at Norris Hall at the time of the shooting and she is missing at the moment.” Over the next 14 hours, friends and acquaintances responded with bits of information from various sources. Shortly after the original posting, someone reported that she was either dead or at the hospital. Then she was in critical condition. People posted expressions of relief, and the discussion seemed to subside. But before noon on Tuesday, Alex Grant posted a conversation indicating that unidentified bodies remained in Norris Hall, and that Ms. McCain was neither in the hospital nor the morgue. By around 1 p.m., Rachael Leach wrote in: “My roommate is her friend, and she called me this morning to tell me Lauren was identifiable and dead. Pray for that situation.” At 4:37 p.m. Ms. Treon posted at a different Facebook group that she started, VT Victim Information: Lauren McCain is not alive. She was not found at the hospital or the morgue. Since Norris Hall was locked down for the night, her parents are not able to identify her body… Tuesday evening, Ms. McCain was listed among those confirmed dead on the Web site of The Collegiate Times, the student newspaper at Virginia Tech. For other families, worst fears turned out not to be warranted. “When I looked at the map of where our daughter is staying and where her dorm lies in the path of the shootings — where the gunman may have traveled to get to Norris Hall, my wife and I were just torn emotionally during the news casts like other Virginia Tech parents,” wrote William S. on an “Online Vigil” run by The Virginian-Pilot. “But now that she is safe, we can only feel sadness for those victims of this senseless act and the pain their families are going through.” Paul, a Virginia Tech student, blogged about searching for his girlfriend, Katelyn Carney: “I try calling Kate but she isn’t answering her phone. I am assuming she is in Mcbride because I have had a few German classes in that building but I’m not sure. We check her schedule to find out that she in fact had her German class in Norris Hall. Now I’m freaked out, and franticly try to call her, but she isn’t picking up. “Fast forward a couple minutes, I get a call from Montgomery Hospital. A very kind nurse wanted to give me a message from Katelyn Carney. I obviously oblige and ask what the message is. She says, ok, the message is ‘I’ve got red on me.’ Of course I instantly think, what a hilarious thing to say in a situation like this, but at the same time, I’m now MORE worried than I was before, and ask the nurse if she is able to patch me through to Kate. “Right as she picks up the phone she tells me, ‘I got red on me.’ I laugh, and immediately try to find out if she’s hurt or what to expect, and she lets me know that she’s fine, stable, good, not hurt … only slightly. “Technology failed some students at key moments. On a forum at FARK.com, user WhenWillThenBeNow wrote at 12:47 p.m. on Monday, “But I live on campus … we are getting nothing, and just as they had announced that there were 20+ dead, everyone on campus lost cable … just saying.” The university’s failure to keep students updated during the two hours between shootings has drawn considerable criticism. “Ironic,” writes RonJ, a Virginia Tech employee, “that we’ve been having meetings about redesigning our emergency notification systems, to be able to include mass-blasting cell phones and stuff. I suspect that will be made a higher priority.” But while technology failures left some on campus in the dark, it did help Ms. Treon, who attends Loudon Valley High School, over 200 miles away, feel connected. She said that after she created her victim-search Facebook group, a relative of Ms. McCain asked for her help. “Throughout the night, I kept saying, ‘This is amazing, just amazing’ at the outpour of love and support that I was receiving from strangers,” she wrote in a Facebook message to NYTimes.com. “My heart aches at” the most recent information about Ms. McCain, she said, “because throughout the hours last night, I came to a real connection with her, and I felt like I was one of her friends.”   Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

  Updates on Virginia Tech Tag: virginia April 18, 2007, 9:05 am Updates on Virginia Tech By Mike Nizza Tags: murder, virginia Late Afternoon News Briefing | 4:41 PM ET NBC received mail today from Cho Seung-Cho, the superintendent of Virginia’s state police announced. The package, which included photographs, text and video, was sent via U.S. mail, NBC said. And the network also said it appeared to be sent between the first and second shootings. More on the timing of the mailing from The A.P.: The package, time-stamped and mailed in the two-hour window between Monday’s shootings, was sent to NBC News head Steve Capus. It contained digital photos of the gunman holding weapons and a manifesto that “rants against rich people and warns that he wants to get even,” according to a New York law enforcement official familiar with the case, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about it. The network immediately turned it over to authorities, and the F.B.I. is currently analyzing it, said the superintendent, Steve Flaherty. NBC Nightly News plans on reporting on it tonight.

  Police Questioned Him, No Charges Were Pressed Todd Heisler/The New York Times A candlelight vigil on the campus of Virginia Tech on Tuesday night. April 18, 2007 Police Questioned Him, No Charges Were Pressed By CHRISTINE HAUSER Two female students at Virginia Polytechnic Institute complained to authorities about the behavior of Cho Seung-Hui, the killer in the shooting rampage there, when he contacted them in separate incidents in 2005. Police questioned Mr. Cho and he was sent to a mental health facility, but no charges were filed against him. A Virginia court document said that in 2005 a special justice in Virginia declared Mr. Cho mentally ill and an “imminent danger to others,” a CNN report said. The new information, disclosed by police in a news conference today, raises questions about whether warning signs about Mr. Cho’s behavior and problems were handled effectively by police and the university. The police today revealed further details about the 23-year-old student who was the gunman in the shooting rampage that left 33 dead, including himself. Also in 2005, Lucinda Roy, an English professor, shared her concerns about Mr. Cho with the Virginia Tech police, but no official report was filed. The writings did not express threatening intentions, or allude to criminal activity, the police said today. In the incidents involving the female students, the police said that in late November 2005, Mr. Cho contacted a fellow female student, by phone and in person, and she notified the campus police. She later declined to press charges, but officers spoke with Mr. Cho, who was referred to the University’s disciplinary system. On December 12, 2005, a second female student complained to the police about an instant message Mr. Cho sent to her by computer. The police then spoke with Mr. Cho and asked him to have no further contact with the student. The police said the message was not threatening, and the student characterized it as “annoying.”The police spoke with acquaintances of Mr. Cho’s and became concerned that Mr. Cho might be suicidal. Officers suggested to Mr. Cho that he speak to a counselor and he did so. He went voluntarily to the police department and, based on his meeting with the counselor, a temporary detention order was obtained and Mr. Cho was taken to a mental health facility, Carilion Saint Albans Behavioral Health Center. Neither of the female students who complained about Mr. Cho were among the shooting victims, and the police said they did not know if they were in the vicinity of the shootings. There were no further referrals to the police before Mr. Cho was named on Tuesday in connection with the deaths of the students and teachers on the sprawling campus. Classes at Virginia Tech have been canceled this week, and Norris Hall has been closed for the rest of the semester. Students are mourning their friends and teachers who were killed, and many of them have left campus to stay elsewhere. “A lot of people went to friends’ apartments and stayed with them because they didn’t want to be in the dorm,” said Karen Kirk, 19, a student from Norfolk, Va., who lives in West Ambler Johnston Hall where the first shootings took place. The campus was tense this morning when the police cleared a building, Burruss Hall, where the office of the university president is located after a campus operator received a threat against him. But reports of a suspicious person were later determined to be unfounded. “Reports of this kind are not uncommon in the wake of what has taken place in the past 48 hours on the Virginia Tech campus, which is one reason why there is high police visibility throughout the campus,” said Chief W.R. Flinchum, of the Virginia Tech Police. In all, 33 people died Monday, including four faculty members. Victims included Liviu Librescu, a Holocaust survivor, and Reema Samaha, a freshman and a devoted dancer. President Bush, who attended a solemn convocation on the campus on Tuesday, spoke today at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in memory of the 32 dead, recalling the bravery of Mr. Librescu and other acts of courage. “With the gunman set to enter his class, this brave professor blocked the door with his body while his students fled to safety,” Mr. Bush said. “On the Day of Remembrance, this Holocaust survivor gave his own life so that others might live. And this morning we honor his memory, and we take strength from his example.” Mr. Cho has been described as a troubled young man known by few on campus. Federal investigators said Mr. Cho — a South Korean immigrant who Americanized his name and preferred to be known as Seung Cho — left behind a note that they described as a lengthy, rambling and bitter list of complaints focusing on moral laxity and double-dealing he found among what he viewed as wealthier and more privileged students on campus. New information has emerged that may help explain a fateful two-hour delay by university officials in warning the campus of a gunman at large. According to search warrants and statements from the police, campus investigators had been busy pursuing what appears to have been a fruitless lead in the first of two shooting episodes Monday. After two people, Emily Jane Hilscher, a freshman, and Ryan Clark, the resident adviser whose room was nearby in the dormitory, were shot dead, the campus police began searching for Karl D. Thornhill, who was described in Internet memorials as Ms. Hilscher’s boyfriend. The police said this morning they were trying to determine if there was a connection between Mr. Cho and Ms. Hilscher. According to a search warrant filed by the police, Ms. Hilscher’s roommate had told the police that Mr. Thornhill, a student at nearby Radford University, had guns at his town house. The roommate told the police that she had recently been at a shooting range with Mr. Thornhill, the affidavit said, leading the police to believe he may have been the gunman. But as they were questioning Mr. Thornhill, reports of widespread shooting at Norris Hall came in, making it clear that they had not contained the threat on campus. Mr. Thornhill was not arrested, although he continues to be an important witness in the case, the police said. In the news conference today, the police said that he was never held and that he was not a “person of interest,” defined as more than a witness and less than a suspect. At the time of the dormitory shootings, Col. W. Steven Flaherty, the superintendent of the Virginia State Police, said, “There was certainly no evidence or no reason to think that there was anyone else at that particular point in time.” State officials continued to defend the actions of the campus authorities. John W. Marshall, the Virginia secretary of public safety, said Charles W. Steger, the president of Virginia Tech, and Chief Wendell Flinchum of the campus police “made the right decisions based on the best information that they had available at the time.” Gov. Timothy M. Kaine said today he was appointing Col. W. Gerald Massengill, former superintendent of Virginia State Police, to head the independent panel that would conduct a review of the university’s response. Colonel Massengill was the superintendent of the Virginia State Police during the 2002 sniper shootings in the state. After the shootings, the state police executed another search warrant, this time for Mr. Cho’s dormitory room. The warrant said a bomb threat against the engineering school buildings was found near Mr. Cho’s body. The warrant mentioned two other bomb threat notes against the campus received over the past three weeks. Mr. Cho had used two handguns, a 9-millimeter and a .22-caliber, to shoot dozens of rounds, leaving even those who survived with multiple bullet wounds, officials said. The guns were bought legally in March and April. Colonel Flaherty said that although one of those guns had been used in the dormitory shooting, investigators were not ready to conclude that the same gunman was responsible for both episodes. But he said there was no evidence of another gunman or an accomplice. Among the central unknowns is what prompted the gunman to move to Norris Hall, which contains engineering and other classrooms, where all but the first two killings took place. The authorities said Mr. Cho’s preparations, including chaining the doors, suggested planning and premeditation, rather than a spontaneous event. Bodies were found in four classrooms and the stairwell of the building, Colonel Flaherty said. Officers also found several knives on Mr. Cho’s body. They first identified him by a driver’s license found in a backpack near the scene of the shootings, although it was not clear at first whether the backpack belonged to the gunman. But the name was checked against a visa application, and when a fingerprint on one of the weapons matched a print on the visa application, the authorities made a positive identification. The print matched another print left in the first shooting location. Prescription medications said to be related to treatment of psychological problems were found among Mr. Cho’s effects, but officials did not specify what drugs they were. In addition, investigators were reviewing recent bomb threats at the university in an effort to determine whether the gunman might have been involved in them, as an effort to test the university’s emergency response procedures. Ms. Roy said Mr. Cho’s writing, laced with anger, profanity and violence, concerned several faculty members. In 2005, she sent examples to the campus police, the campus counseling service and other officials. All were worried, but little could be done, she said. Ms. Roy said she would offer to go with Mr. Cho to counseling, just to talk. “But he wouldn’t say yes, and unfortunately I couldn’t force him to do it,” she said. Students were also alarmed that Mr. Cho was taking inappropriate pictures of women under desks, she said. Nikki Giovanni, whose poetry classes Mr. Cho attended in 2005, said today that other students had left the class because of Mr. Cho, and she was so concerned about his behavior that she wrote to Ms. Roy about it. “I was willing to resign before I was going to continue with him,” Ms. Giovanni said in an interview with CNN. “People just quit coming to class, a couple of students absolutely quit coming to class.” Ms. Roy said she contacted the campus police, student affairs, counseling services, the college, and the police, who offered to provide security for Ms. Giovanni during classes, but she declined. The police would take no further action because Mr. Cho’s works contained no direct threats, she said. Ms. Roy told CNN that she “felt strongly that he was suicidal.” She said talking to him was “like talking to a hole … that he was not really there.” Ms. Giovanni said Mr. Cho did not scare her, but she once instructed him to stop his disturbing writings. “He said ‘You can’t make me,’ and I said ‘Yeah, I can.’” “This was not a poem ….he was writing, just weird things,” she added. “I don’t know if I’m allowed to say what he was writing about. I saw the plays, but he was writing poetry, it was terrible, it was not like poetry, it was intimidating.” Shaila Dewan, John M. Broder and Sarah Abruzzese contributed reporting for this article.   Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

  Today’s Papers Warning Signs By Daniel Politi Posted Wednesday, April 18, 2007, at 6:12 A.M. E.T. Monday’s massacre at Virginia Tech continues to dominate the front pages this morning, as attention now turns to the student who was identified as the shooter and his victims. The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times lead with a look at Cho Seung-Hui, the 23-year-old English major who was identified as the gunman. As soon as his name became public, students and professors came forward to say they had frequently harbored concerns about the South Korean immigrant who barely spoke a word to anyone, didn’t seem to have any friends, and wrote bizarrely violent assignments for class. The New York Times leads with information released yesterday that gets closer to explaining why university officials took more than two hours to warn students there was a gunman on campus after the first two people were killed in a dormitory. It seems that, as some initially suspected, police and campus authorities were busy pursuing someone else they thought was responsible. USA Today leads, and the Wall Street Journal tops its world-wide newsbox, with yesterday’s memorial services at the Virginia Tech campus. President Bush spoke at the university yesterday afternoon and urged members of the community to “reach out to those who ache for sons and daughters who are never coming home.” As the identity of the gunman was revealed, it became clear there had been warning signs, and some had even raised their concerns to university officials. Everyone quotes poet Nikki Giovanni, who appears to have been the first to have voiced worries about Cho when he was a student in her creative writing class in the fall of 2005. Giovanni says Cho frequently turned in assignments that she found disturbing (yesterday, AOL posted two plays Cho allegedly wrote for a class). “Kids write about murder and suicide all the time. But there was something that made all of us pay attention closely,” Giovanni said. At one point, most of Giovanni’s students didn’t show up for her class, supposedly because they were afraid of Cho. As a result, the chairwoman of the English department, Lucinda Roy, agreed to teach Cho privately. The NYT says Roy was so nervous about being alone with Cho that she set up a system so that her assistant would know if she was in trouble. Roy shared her concerns with university officials but they said that nothing could be done since there were no specific threats. By all accounts, Cho barely ever spoke a single word to anybody and always seemed to hide behind a hat and sunglasses. He shared a three-bedroom suite with five roommates, and the LAT says there was such little communication between them that some didn’t even know how to pronounce Cho’s name. One of his roommates said Cho’s routine began to change a few weeks ago as he cut his hair into a military-style cut and started waking up earlier and going to the gym. The Post says police found two three-page notes in Cho’s room in which he bitterly wrote about wealthy students and even named people whom he believed had kept him from succeeding. While searching his room, officials also found prescription medicine that apparently was used to treat mental health problems. It is now believed that Cho was responsible for the recent bomb threats at the university. Cho bought the two guns he used in the shooting rampage legally. Although officials have not been able to confirm that Cho also killed the two students in the dorm earlier in the day, the same 9 mm weapon was used. Assuming Cho was responsible for the first shooting, it’s unclear why he would have targeted the student and the resident adviser at that particular dorm. The LAT talks to the roommate of the first victim and she says her friend did not know Cho, and has no idea why she was a target. The roommate said that when police came to question her right after the shooting she told them about the victim’s boyfriend and described him as a gun user. That appears to have led police to focus their energies on searching for the boyfriend without realizing that a gunman was still at large. This leads to two of the largest unanswered questions in the case: Assuming Cho was responsible for both shootings, why did he take a two-hour break and what did he do during that time? Also, could Cho have had an accomplice? The NYT goes inside with experts speculating what the delay between the first and second shooting could mean. Meanwhile, as criticism of the university’s response to the first shooting continued to increase, Virginia Tech’s president asked Gov. Timothy Kaine to appoint an independent committee to review Monday’s events. The committee will also look at whether university officials should have paid more attention to the warnings about Cho. All the papers write heart-wrenching stories about the victims. The WSJ goes high with, and everyone else writes about, Liviu Librescu, a Holocaust survivor who was a well-known professor of aerospace engineering. He was killed while trying to prevent the shooter from entering his classroom, which gave students time to jump out the window. And there’s no shortage of emotional coverage as the papers write about the freshman who loved to dance, the grad student who just got married, and the sophomore who was a talented singer and violinist, to name a few. All the papers mention how MySpace and Facebook have become a gathering place for students to grieve and mourn (not to mention a source for journalists trying to find out information). And now for some lighter reading … The LAT fronts a very amusing dispatch from London that uses the breakup of Prince William and Kate Middleton to take a look at the intricacies of class structure in Britain and how they remain important. As far as most British media are concerned, the reason the prince broke up with the commoner was, well, because she was just “way too middle class.” Never mind that Middleton’s parents owned a $2 million house or that they could send her to a prestigious college, it seems her mother’s past as a flight attendant (not to mention her gum-chewing ways) was too much to bear. Daniel Politi writes “Today’s Papers” for Slate. He can be reached at todayspapers@slate.com.

  Tuesday, April 17, 2007 Virginia Tech’s tragedy is America’s, too A Killer in Blacksburg Virginia Tech’s tragedy is America’s, too. Tuesday, April 17, 2007; A20 EVEN IN a nation numb to violence and inured to recurrent school shootings, the scale of the human tragedy at Virginia Tech yesterday was heartbreaking. The nation watched, transfixed and horrified, as grainy cellphone images and video footage from Blacksburg conveyed a sense of the carnage and mayhem at a university seized in the blink of an eye by terror. And the nation grieved, once again, as young lives brimming with promise and possibility were cut short by that now familiar campus scourge: an aggrieved gunman, or gunmen, on a rampage. Students and commentators dubbed it “the college Columbine,” recalling two teenagers’ killing of 12 students at Colorado’s Columbine High School in 1999. In fact, the toll at Virginia Tech yesterday was statistically worse — at least 33 dead and more than 30 injured, the deadliest mass shooting of civilians in American history. And the details, as they emerged in early, unconfirmed reports, were unspeakable: students lined up and shot in a classroom; students leaping from the windows of buildings to save themselves; a gunman unidentified for hours because his head wounds were so severe. The atrocity at Virginia Tech sparked instant and fierce debates, online and elsewhere, even as survivors were fighting for their lives. Under what circumstances, and where, did the gunman obtain his weapons? Would the university have suffered the same tragedy if Virginia law did not prohibit the carrying of guns on campus? Should metal detectors be ubiquitous in American classrooms and dormitories? And why are gunmen so apt to carry out their lethal rampages at American schools? More particularly, what more, if anything, could the authorities at Virginia Tech have done to prevent yesterday’s carnage? Were possible warning signs, such as bomb threats in the weeks before the incident, adequately investigated? And between the first shootings around 7 a.m., when two people were killed in a dormitory, and the second ones two hours later, when 31 died at a classroom building, did the city and campus police take all possible steps to lock down the university and scour it for the shooter? On a sprawling campus of 2,600 acres and almost 22,000 students, given imperfect communications, is it even feasible to lock every door and bolt every window on short notice? As the debates rage and questions are raised, the mourning will go on. But the parents, relatives and friends of the victims at Virginia Tech will not mourn alone. Their tragedy is America’s too.

  Students Down, Doors Barred, Leaps to Safety ‘Pop, Pop, Pop’: Students Down, Doors Barred, Leaps to Safety By Michael E. Ruane and Jose Antonio Vargas Washington Post Staff Writers Tuesday, April 17, 2007; A01 Yesterday morning. Second floor. Norris Hall. In Room 207, Mr. Bishop’s German class is underway. A few doors down, Professor Librescu is posting slides for his engineering students in 204. Outside, the Virginia Tech campus is gray and chilly but pretty normal for a Monday. “It couldn’t have been much more normal,” said Richard Mallalieu, one of Liviu Librescu’s students. Suddenly, sometime after 9 a.m., a young man walked into the German class with two handguns and shot instructor Christopher James Bishop in the head. Then he began firing at the students. Shot after shot, “some 30 shots in all,” said Trey Perkins, who was seated in the back of the German class. He shot a girl in the mouth, a boy in the legs. There were about 15 students, and Perkins said the relentless gunman 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. The gunman left, and Perkins, sounding shaken in a telephone interview yesterday, said “three or four” students appeared to be dead. In Room 204, the engineering students were watching Librescu’s slides on the subject of virtual work when they began to hear shots from what sounded like an adjacent classroom, said Mallalieu, 23, a student from Luray, Va. “At first I tried to convince myself they weren’t gunshots, that if anything, maybe a presentation was going on, to try to convince myself it wasn’t,” Mallalieu said in a telephone interview from his Blacksburg apartment. “It became evident pretty quick what was going on.” Plus, he said, “there were a few screams.” At first, he got down and hid behind a desk as Librescu held the classroom door closed. Then the students went to the windows. As they pondered whether to jump, the gunshots went on. “A steady pop, pop, pop, pop,” Mallalieu said. The gunfire was “more or less continuous.” He said he heard 20 to 30 shots as he and other students noticed there was grass below and decided it was time to jump. “It was scary,” he said, “but it wasn’t as panicked as you might think it was.” The engineering students pushed open the windows. On the first floor, custodian Gene W. Cole, 52, was preparing to clean a bathroom when someone reported a shooting in a second-floor lab. Cole took an elevator and got off at 2. “I walked around the corner, and I saw something in the hallway there,” Cole said in a telephone interview. “As I got closer, I saw it was a girl lying on the floor jerking around as if she was trying to get up. There was blood all over her and all over the floor around her.” A man dressed in bluejeans, a dark sweat shirt and a hat stepped out of a classroom and flashed a black handgun. “He acted like he was angry,” Cole said. “I just thought, ‘Oh my God, he’s fit to kill me.’ He didn’t say nothing; he just started shooting. He shot at me five times.” Bullets zipped past Cole’s head. He ran down some back stairs, saw that several exits had what looked like new chains and locks on them, and escaped through an auditorium. Cole, who has worked at Virginia Tech for 20 years, said the chains and locks had to have been put on the doors shortly before the shooting because they were not there earlier that morning. Back in Room 207, Perkins, a student named Derek and a female student headed toward the heavy wooden classroom door and held it shut with their feet. Other students were crying. One vomited. Two minutes later, Perkins said, the gunman came back. But now he couldn’t get in. So he started shooting through the door, Perkins said, before leaving again. “Fortunately, we were lying down and weren’t in front of the door,” he said. Whispering and trying to compose himself, Perkins, an Eagle Scout, said he told Derek and the female student to keep their feet on the door in case the gunman returned. Perkins said he went around the room, tending to the wounded students. A student named Garrett was shot in both legs. Perkins wrapped his gray pullover sweater around Garrett’s right leg. Perkins used Garrett’s tank top to wrap the other leg. Perkins saw a sweat shirt on a desk and covered the girl with the mouth wound. “He knew exactly what he was doing,” Perkins said of the gunman. “I have no idea why he did what he decided to do. I just can’t say how lucky I am to have made it.” In 204, the students had opened the windows and were jumping for their lives. “It’s kind of hard to believe that something like this would happen,” Mallalieu said. “You hear things about Columbine. . . . But you never think you’d be involved in that. But at that point I realized it was really happening.” Mallalieu, the son of a chemist, said he climbed out, hung for a moment from the ledge, looked down and let go. “I kind of tried to roll when I landed,” he said. He suffered some scratches. He’s not sure everybody got out. Those who did ran for a nearby campus building. As they did, Mallalieu said it sounded as though the gunshots, and the screams, were now coming from 204. He said he heard about 40 shots in all. There was little conversation as the students fled. “At that point, it was just, get away,” he said. “I think everybody kind of had the same feeling about what was going on. We didn’t really need to talk about it. “I don’t think it’s settled in yet,” he said. “I haven’t heard how my other classmates who I think were still left behind, you know, what happened to them, be it good or bad.” A man identifying himself as one of Bishop’s relatives said the family had no comment. Last night, a woman who answered the phone at Librescu’s home and identified herself as his wife said she did not know whether he had survived.

  2-Hour Gap Leaves Room For Questions Freshman Ryan Fowler hugs his father, Tim, right, as his mother, MaryEllen, hugs another student. Fowler’s parents drove from Maryland to pick him up 2-Hour Gap Leaves Room For Questions By Alec MacGillis and Adam Kilgore Washington Post Staff Writers Tuesday, April 17, 2007; A01 A single question stood out yesterday at Virginia Tech: Would more students be alive if the university had stopped them from going to class after a shooting occurred in a campus dorm? The first shooting was reported at 7:15 a.m. in a dormitory, West Ambler Johnston Hall, where police found two people fatally wounded. But the first e-mail message from the Virginia Tech administration to students did not go out until more than two hours later, at 9:26 a.m., stating that a shooting had occurred but with no mention of staying indoors or staying off campus or canceling classes. About 9:45, the shootings began in Norris Hall, a classroom building at the other end of the sprawling campus. Police said the gunman killed 30 people at Norris and wounded about 30 before killing himself. “I don’t know why they let people stay in classrooms,” said Sean Glennon, a junior from Centreville and the quarterback on the Hokies football team. “A lot of people are angry that campus wasn’t evacuated a little earlier.” The university president and campus police chief said they decided not to cancel classes after the first shootings because the initial indication at the dorm, based on interviews with witnesses, was that the attack might have been a domestic-violence incident and that the shooter probably had fled the campus. “We were acting on the best information we had at the time,” said Wendell Flinchum, the campus police chief. “We felt that this incident was isolated to that dormitory.” University President Charles W. Steger said officials also were unsure what the alternative would be to allowing classes to proceed. More than 14,000 of the university’s 26,000 full-time students live off campus, and, with some classes starting at 8 a.m., many of them were en route when officials were having to decide, he said. The university and police decided that students would be safer in their classrooms than milling around the campus or in their dorms, he said. “The question is, [where] do you keep them that is more safe?” Steger said. He added: “We concluded that it was best, once they got in their classrooms . . . to lock them down” there. Officials characterized the response as a “lockdown” in classrooms, but with the first e-mail alert not going out until 9:26, most students were oblivious to any trouble. Dustin Lynch, 19, a sophomore from Churchville, Md., said that at the time of the Norris Hall shootings, he was out on the Drillfield, a large oval lawn on campus, raising money for charity with other members of the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity. It was only when he saw a swarm of police cruisers racing to Norris Hall that he knew something was amiss. University officials said classroom buildings are open at all times except late at night. The university could have restricted access to the building using an electronic key-card system built into many doorways, according to a law enforcement source, but investigators thought the shooter might have been a student with a key card that would have given him access to the buildings despite the lockdown. “The question everyone is asking is: How can you have two hours between the shootings and the place not be locked down?” said the source, who was given an intelligence briefing yesterday but was not authorized to speak publicly. The university was aware of the challenges involved in reaching students during a crisis, even in an age when everyone seems to be wired. In August, a jail inmate escaped, fatally shot a hospital guard and a sheriff’s deputy and then hid on campus on the first day of classes, setting off a manhunt that shut down campus. The university posted updates on its Web site that day and sent out e-mails, but it took longer for the news to reach students who were commuting to school and were not online. A campus spokesman said earlier this semester that the university was working with a company to provide a service that would send out text-message alerts to students’ cellphones. The university was considering requiring students to give their cellphone numbers when they register for classes, he said. Yesterday, Steger said that the university would review its emergency response policies again in light of the shootings but that only so much could be done to prepare for unforeseen disasters. “It’s very difficult. This is an open society and an open campus with 26,000 people, and we can’t have armed guards in front of every classroom every day of the year,” he said. “It was one of those things no one anticipated. . . . Honestly, every situation we face is different.” It was not until 9:50 a.m., after the Norris Hall shootings, that a stronger e-mail warning from the university reached students: “A gunman is loose on campus. Stay in buildings until further notice. Stay away from all windows.” A third e-mail went out at 10:16, canceling classes and asking students to stay put. And it was 10:52, more than an hour after the Norris Hall shootings, that an e-mail went out stating that the attack had occurred. Justin Born, a junior from Centreville, had left for his 10:10 class after checking his e-mail and seeing the first 9:26 notice about being “cautious.” “I was like, ‘All right.’ I decided to go to class, because I didn’t think it was that big of a deal,” he said. After parking on campus and walking to class, he saw people running to cars and running from the campus, shouting about the second shooting. It was only after he got home that he saw the e-mail about classes being canceled. “I don’t know how to describe it,” he said. “It just seems, I don’t know, immature. I don’t if immature is the right word, but it doesn’t seem like Virginia Tech did the right thing by not canceling class after a shooting. It was ridiculous.”

  Gunman Identified as a Student Todd Heisler/The New York Times Virginia Tech students watching a simulcast of Tuesday’s convocation April 17, 2007 Virginia Gunman Identified as a Student By CHRISTINE HAUSER The gunman who killed 32 people and himself on the campus of Virginia Polytechnic Institute Monday was identified today as a student who lived in a dormitory on campus but kept to himself. Law enforcement authorities said the gunman was Cho Seung-Hui, 23, a South Korean who was a resident alien in the United States and in his senior year as an English major. Today, a police affidavit said that a bomb threat note was found near his body and that the police believe two previous bomb threats in the past three weeks could be connected to him. It added that the suspect recently purchased a handgun at a gun shop in Roanoke, Va. Mr. Cho was described by fellow students in television interviews broadcast today as being “thorough” as he moved through the classrooms opening fire. He wore an outfit that resembled a boy scout uniform and tried to push through doors that were barricaded by students. In a German class in Norris Hall, one of the buildings where the killings took place, Mr. Cho entered the room and opened fire on the professor before turning a gun on the students. Trey Perkins, a 20-year old mechanical engineering student, was among the students who got down on the floor and tried to shield themselves with desks when Mr. Cho opened fire. “There were a couple of screams but for the most part it was eerily silent other than the gunfire,” he said. “He never said a word the whole time. I’ve never seen a straighter face.” In a photograph distributed by the police after Mr. Cho’s identity was released, he is wearing eyeglasses and has closely cropped hair, and is staring directly into the camera with little expression. At least 17 were also injured after the two shooting attacks at the university on Monday during three hours of horror and chaos on the sprawling campus. In a news conference today, authorities said ballistic tests showed that one of two weapons found in Norris Hall, a classroom building where most of the killing took place, had also been used in the other location, West Ambler Johnston Hall, a 900-student freshman dormitory and the scene of the first shootings. Mr. Cho moved to the United States with his family as a grade school student in 1992, government officials in South Korea said. While he had a residence established in Centreville, Va., Mr. Cho was living on campus in Harper Residence Hall. He was described as a “loner” by the university’s associate vice president, Harry Hincker. It was the deadliest shooting rampage in American history and came nearly eight years to the day after 13 people died at Columbine High School in Colorado at the hands of two disaffected students who then killed themselves. The police and witnesses said some victims were executed while other students were hurt jumping from upper-story windows of the classroom building where most of the killings occurred. After the second round of killings, the gunman killed himself, the police said. Investigators were trying to sift through what Col. W. Steve Flaherty, the state police superintendent, described as a “horrific crime scene” at Norris Hall, where the shooting had caused tremendous chaos and panic. A 9-millimeter Glock handgun and 22-caliber Walther handgun were recovered from the building. Personal belongings were strewn about on the second floor. Victims were found in four classrooms and a stairwell. “We know that there were a number of heroic events took place,” he said. A university spokeswoman, Jenn Lazenby, said on Monday the university was looking into whether two bomb threats at the campus — one last Friday, the other earlier this month — might be related to the shootings. Today, a Virginia state police affidavit said that a bomb threat note was found in the vicinity of the shooting suspect, and it was “reasonable” to believe it was connected with the shootings. A warrant was issued for Mr. Cho’s dorm room to search for tools, documents, computer software, weapons, ammunition and explosives. The authorities also released an affidavit for a police warrant to search the apartment of a man identified as Karl David Thornhill to look for firearms, ammunition, bloody clothing, footwear, and other “tangible evidence” associated with the alleged murders. Mr. Thornhill was said to have given the police conflicting information about the location of his guns and his whereabouts over the weekend. Reporters who went to the address on the affidavit were told by a young man at the door: “The person you are looking for is not here.” According to the college newspaper, The Collegiate Times, many of the deaths took place in the German class in Norris Hall. Survivors told dramatic stories of the events. Mr. Perkins said that during class, someone opened the door to the room twice and peeked in, but the class assumed that it was a student looking for his room. “It was someone of Asian descent, so it might have been the same guy,” Mr. Perkins said. About 10 minutes later, the door, which had no window, opened again and the shooter fired first at the professor, and then began methodically shooting the students, beginning with those in the front row. The gunman then left but tried to return, managing to open the door a few inches as students inside pushed back. “Derek, who is my classmate, he was shot in the arm and it was just amazing to me that he was still up and leaning against the door,” Mr. Perkins said. “The guy tried to come back in and we were able to hold him off. “ Another student, Erin Sheehan, helped tend to the wounded in the class as her fellow students tried to hold the door closed. “He seemed very thorough about it,” she told CNN, referring to the way the gunman carried out the shooting. At least 17 of the wounded were still in the hospital this morning. One of them was the girlfriend of a student, Paul Geiger, 21, who was at Montgomery Regional Hospital this morning to visit her. “She was part of the German class that got hit,” he said of his girlfriend, who had been shot in the hand. “She helped barricade the door. For me, she is my hero.” Joseph Cacioppo, a surgeon at Montgomery Regional Hospital who treated some of the injured, said on CNN that the injuries showed that the gunman was “brutal.” None of the injured that he treated had “less than three to four wounds in them,” he said. Today, the university hosted a convocation attended by President Bush, who called it “the worst day of violence in college history.” “It’s impossible to make sense of such violence and suffering,” he said. “Those whose lives were taken did nothing to deserve their fate. They were simply at the wrong place at the wrong time.” Mr. Bush has ordered flags at half-staff through Sunday at sunset. Classes have been canceled for the week to allow students to grieve. Norris Hall is to be closed completely for the semester. Questions have been raised about whether university officials had responded adequately to the shootings. There was a two-hour gap between the first shootings, when two people were killed, and the second, when a gunman stalked through the halls of an engineering building across campus, shooting at professors and students in classrooms and hallways, firing dozens of rounds and killing 30. Officials said he then shot himself so badly in the face that he could not be identified. The university did not send a campus wide alert until the second attack had begun, even though the gunman in the first had not been apprehended. Responding to criticism and suggestions that there was a delay between the first shooting and the first e-mail notifying students that something had happened, the Virginia Tech president, Charles W. Steger, said that the first dormitory was immediately closed down after the first incident and surrounded by security guards. Streets were cordoned off and students in the building notified about what was going on, he said. “We also had to find witnesses because we didn’t know what had happened,” he said. Wounded people were sent to hospital and, based on the interrogation of witnesses, they thought “there was another person involved.” Students said a gunman had gone room to room looking for his ex-girlfriend. He killed two people, a senior identified as Ryan Clark, from Augusta, Ga., and a freshman identified by other students on her floor as Emily Hilscher. The shootings at the engineering building, Norris Hall, began at about 9:45. The university has more than 25,000 full-time students on a campus that is spread over 2,600 acres. Asian-American students at Virginia Tech reacted to news about the gunman’s identity with shock and some anxiety about a possible backlash. “My parents are actually worried about retaliation against Asians,” said Lyu Boaz, a third-year accounting student who was born in South Korea and became an American citizen a year ago. “After 9/11, a lot of Arabs were attacked for that reason.” Mr. Boaz, a resident adviser at Pritchard Hall, said many Korean-American students left campus immediately. Parents of other Korean-American students were preparing to pick up their children this afternoon and take them home. Until Monday, the deadliest campus shooting in United States history was in 1966 at the University of Texas, where Charles Whitman climbed to the 28th-floor observation deck of a clock tower and opened fire, killing 16 people before he was shot and killed by the police. In the Columbine High attack in 1999, two teenagers killed 12 fellow students and a teacher before killing themselves. The single deadliest shooting in the United States came in October 1991, when George Jo Hennard crashed his pickup truck through the window of a Luby’s cafeteria in Killeen, Tex., then shot 22 people dead and wounded at least 20 others. He shot himself in the head. John M. Broder, Graham Bowley, Sheryl Gay Stolberg, Choe Sang-hun, Shaila Dewan, Edmund L. Andrews, Matthew L. Wald and Alicia C. Shepard contributed reporting. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

  Deadliest Shooting in U.S. History Gunman Kills 32 at Virginia Tech In Deadliest Shooting in U.S. History By Ian Shapira and Tom Jackman Washington Post Staff Writers Tuesday, April 17, 2007; A01 BLACKSBURG, Va., April 16 — An outburst of gunfire at a Virginia Tech dormitory, followed two hours later by a ruthless string of attacks at a classroom building, killed 32 students, faculty and staff and left about 30 others injured yesterday in the deadliest shooting rampage in the nation’s history. The shooter, whose name was not released last night, wore bluejeans, a blue jacket and a vest holding ammunition, witnesses said. He carried a 9mm semiautomatic and a .22-caliber handgun, both with the serial numbers obliterated, federal law enforcement officials said. Witnesses described the shooter as a young man of Asian descent — a silent killer who was calm and showed no expression as he pursued and shot his victims. He killed himself as police closed in. He had left two dead at the dormitory and 30 more at a science and engineering building, where he executed people taking and teaching classes after chaining some doors shut behind him. At one point, he shot at a custodian who was helping a victim. Witnesses described scenes of chaos and grief, with students jumping from second-story windows to escape gunfire and others blocking their classroom doors to keep the gunman away. Even before anyone knew who the gunman was or why he did what he did, the campus community in Southwest Virginia began questioning whether most of the deaths could have been prevented. They wondered why the campus was not shut down after the first shooting. The enormity of the event brought almost immediate expressions of condolences from President Bush, both houses of Congress and across the world. “I’m really at a loss for words to explain or to understand the carnage that has visited our campus,” said Charles W. Steger, president of Virginia Tech, one of the state’s largest and most prestigious universities. The rampage began as much of the campus was just waking up. A man walked into a freshman coed dorm at 7:15 a.m. and fatally shot a young woman and a resident adviser. Based on witness interviews, police thought it was an isolated domestic case and chose not to take any drastic campus-wide security measures, university officials said. But about 9:45 a.m., a man entered a classroom building and started walking into classrooms and shooting faculty members and students with the two handguns. Virginia Tech Police Chief Wendell Flinchum said investigators were not certain that the same man committed both shootings. But several law enforcement sources said he did. As police entered Norris Hall, an engineering and science building, shortly before 10 a.m., the man shot and killed himself before officers could confront him. One witness said the gunman was “around 19″ and was “very serious but [with] a very calm look on his face.” “He knew exactly what he was doing,” said the witness, Trey Perkins, 20, of Yorktown, Va. He said he watched the man enter his classroom and shoot Perkins’s professor in the head. “I have no idea why he did what he decided to do. I just can’t say how lucky I am to have made it.” The university canceled classes yesterday and today and set up counseling for the grief-stricken campus. Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D), who had just arrived in Japan on a trade mission, immediately flew back to Virginia. He was expected to attend a vigil today. “We’ve been devastated as the death toll has been rising,” said Payton Baran, 20, of Bethesda, who is a junior majoring in finance. “I’ve been calling everyone I know, and everyone I talk to is pretty much in tears. It’s really, really depressing.” None of the victims’ names was released yesterday by officials, pending notification of their families. University officials said 15 people were injured, but spokesmen at four area hospitals said they treated 29. Initial reports from the campus raised the specter of “another Columbine,” in which two teenagers in Littleton, Colo., killed 13 people inside a high school in 1999 before killing themselves. But soon, the Virginia Tech rampage dwarfed Columbine to become the biggest shooting rampage by an individual in U.S. history. Students and parents launched a frenzied round of phone calls and text messages yesterday morning, monitoring news reports and waiting for information. And the shootings prompted intense questioning of Steger and Flinchum from a community still reeling from the fatal shootings of a security guard and a sheriff’s deputy near campus in August on the first day of classes and the arrest of the suspect on the edge of campus that day. Although the gunman in the dorm was at large, no warning was issued to the tens of thousands of students and staff at Virginia Tech until 9:26 a.m., more than two hours later. “We concluded it was domestic in nature,” Flinchum said. “We had reason to believe the shooter had left campus and may have left the state.” He declined to elaborate. But several law enforcement sources said investigators thought the shooter might have intended to kill a girl and her boyfriend Monday in what one of them described as a “lover’s dispute.” It was unclear whether the girl killed at the dorm was the intended target, they said. The sources said police initially focused on the female student’s boyfriend, a student at nearby Radford University, as a suspect. Police questioned the boyfriend, later termed “a person of interest,” and were questioning him when they learned of the subsequent shootings at Norris Hall. A family friend of the boyfriend’s said the boyfriend was stopped by police alongside Route 460 in Blacksburg, handcuffed and interrogated on the side of the road and later released. Students who lived in the dorm said they received knocks on the door telling them to stay in their rooms but nothing else. Shortly before 9:30 a.m., the university sent out this e-mail: “A shooting incident occurred at West Amber Johnston [dorm] earlier this morning. Police are on the scene and are investigating. “The university community is urged to be cautious and are asked to contact Virginia Tech Police if you observe anything suspicious or with information on the case.” Steger said that, even though the gunman was at large, “we had no reason to suspect any other incident was going to occur.” He said only a fraction of the university’s 28,000 students live on campus, and “it’s extremely difficult if not impossible to get the word out spontaneously.” Students on campus and parents were angry. When Blake Harrison, 21, of Leesburg learned of the shootings, he said, he called an administrative help line and was told “to proceed with caution to classes.” He said: “I’m beyond upset. I’m enraged.” Yesterday, as officials began to sort out the shootings, tales of the horror began to emerge. Alec Calhoun, a junior, was in Room 204 in Norris. When the shootings began, people suddenly pulled off screens and pushed out windows. “Then people started jumping,” he said. “I didn’t just leap. I hung from the ledge and dropped. Anybody who made it out was fine. I fell and I hit a bush to cushion my fall. It knocked the wind out of me. I don’t remember running.” About 9:50 a.m., Jamal Albarghouti was walking toward Norris Hall for a meeting with his adviser in civil engineering “to review my thesis. As I was walking, about 300 feet away, I started hearing people shouting, telling me to run or [get] clear.” He started to move away, but he also pulled out his cellphone, which has videorecording capability, and he began filming. His video, which he later shipped to CNN, captures officers running toward the brown three-story building, a couple of flashes from the second floor and 27 gunshots. The video soon became the defining image of the rampage. “I just didn’t think I was in great danger,” Albarghouti said later. In a German class in Room 207, Perkins was seated in the back with about 15 fellow students. The gunman barged in with two guns, shot the professor in the head, then started shooting students, Perkins said. Panic ensued, he said. “And the shots seemed like it lasted forever.” The gunman left Room 207 and tried to return several minutes later, but Perkins and two other students had blocked the door with their feet. He shot through the door. The last time anyone spoke with Kristina Heeger, she was headed for a 9 a.m. French class in Norris. Within an hour, the sophomore from Vienna had been shot in the back. But she survived. It was a story that played out across campus, and far beyond, with so many wounded, so many dead. “She’s doing better,” said a friend, Eric Anderson, last night after seeing her. “She’s recovering. We’re praying for her right now. She couldn’t talk to them yet, or anyone, and they didn’t know any details about what happened.” Tucker Armstrong, 19, a freshman from Stephens City, Va., passed by Norris as he headed to a 10 a.m. class. He said in an e-mail that he “noticed several kids hanging and jumping from the second floor windows trying to land in bushes.” Armstrong said he heard repeated bangs. He went to help the people who had leapt from the building, but they yelled at him: ” ‘Get out of here, run!’ At that point I realized they were shots and they just kept going and going.” Police and ambulances poured into the area. Dustin Lynch, 19, a sophomore from Churchville, Md., watched from the nearby Drillfield as unresponsive students were carried out of Norris Hall. “I saw police officers literally carrying kids out,” Lynch said. “It basically looked like they were carrying bodies.” Parents arrived at the Inn at Virginia Tech to meet with other grieving families and were distraught at the university’s management of the incident. “I think they should have closed the whole thing. It’s not worth it. You’ve got a crazy man on campus. Do something about it,” said Hoda Bizri of Princeton, W.Va., who was visiting her daughter Siwar, a graduate student. Brett Hudner, 23, communications major from Vienna, was heading toward one of the dining halls and suddenly a scrum of police cars raced by. “The scary thing is I know I’m going to go into classes, and there’s going to be empty spaces,” Hudner said. The Bizris, meanwhile, were waiting for news about a friend whom they could not locate. They think she was inside Norris Hall. Jackman reported from Washington.

  Today’s Papers Bloody Monday By Daniel Politi Posted Tuesday, April 17, 2007, at 6:03 A.M. E.T. All the papers banner and devote most of their Page One space to, while the Wall Street Journal tops its world-wide newsbox with, yesterday’s massacre at the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg that amounted to the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. Two shooting rampages left 33 people dead and approximately 30 injured. The gunman (although it is still unclear whether there was only one) shot himself as police closed in on him. “I’m really at a loss for words to explain or to understand the carnage that has visited our campus,” the university president said. All the papers front the same dramatic picture of police officers carrying students from a campus building. The tragic day began at 7:15 a.m. when two people were killed in a dormitory. But the worst came more than two hours later, when a gunman went into Norris Hall, a science and engineering building, and began shooting students and professors. Officials didn’t release the name of the shooter but witnesses described him as a young Asian man and the New York Times gets word from federal law-enforcement officials that he might have recently arrived in the United States. The Washington Post says the shooter carried a 9mm semiautomatic and a .22-caliber handgun, “both with the serial numbers obliterated.” The Los Angeles Times says 26 people, mostly students, were being treated at several area hospitals. In a nice piece of Page One design, USA Today goes across the top with the excerpt of an e-mail sent out by the university at 9:50 a.m.: “A gunman is loose on campus. …” Everyone spends time looking at this and other e-mails (the first came approximately half an hour earlier) as sadness turned to anger and more people questioned whether university and police officials could have done more to prevent most of the deaths. After the first shooting, police believed it was a “domestic” case and that the gunman had left the campus so they chose not to send out an e-mail alert until two hours later. Even after the shooting started it seems as though university officials had no plan to guide students. USAT talks to a student who says he was driving to school at 10 a.m. when he heard about the shootings from strangers who stopped him and urged him to turn around. At that point he called the school’s information line: “I say to them, ‘I hear everybody’s getting shot, is class canceled?’ And the lady tells me, ‘All I can say is proceed cautiously.’ Proceed cautiously? Meaning what? Avoid 9mm bullets?” By that time the gunman had already entered Norris Hall, chained some of the doors from the inside, and started shooting. The WP and LAT both have accounts from students inside the building, where one of the most harrowing scenes appears to have played out in a German class. The shooter simply walked into the class and shot the teacher in the head. The WP talks to a student who says the gunman had a “very serious but very calm look on his face.” The LAT and NYT quote another student in the class who told the college newspaper she was one of only a few people to have left the classroom unscathed. Interestingly enough, the same student also said the gunman “peeked in twice … like he was looking for someone, somebody, before he started shooting.” In other classrooms in the building, students struggled to decide what to do as they realized they were in the middle of a shooting rampage and that they could be next. Some decided to jump out of windows, later telling how they heard shots in the classroom they had just escaped as they were running away from the building. There was almost immediate outrage from students and their parents, who questioned why police and university officials didn’t react more aggressively to the first shooting and put the campus on lockdown. But USAT talks to experts who make clear that putting a large campus on lockdown is no easy feat. The WP notes that although officials say there was a “lockdown” in classrooms, most students simply didn’t know there was anything going on. In a story inside, the LAT does a good job of plainly going through several of the remaining open questions. Besides the late response time, there is also the nagging question of whether there was only one gunman. If so, does that mean police were pursuing and interviewing the wrong suspect while the gunman roamed the campus? In its lead story, the NYT mentions Virginia’s lax gun laws make it relatively easy for anyone to purchase a handgun. Inside, the LAT notes that those who advocate for stricter gun controls said yesterday’s events show the need for tougher regulations. Those who oppose tougher gun laws have, for the most part, remained silent. While the university was late in bringing information, the LAT fronts a story looking at how students (“members of the most wired generation in history”) were quick to use the Internet to describe their feelings, check on their friends, report new developments, and, of course, post videos and photos. The LAT and WP both go inside with stories that wonder how the massacre will affect a university whose reputation and popularity had been steadily increasing. Meanwhile, officials at universities across the country are likely to begin reviewing their security procedures. In other news, the NYT fronts, and everyone mentions, that Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr pulled his six ministers from the Iraqi Cabinet. Sadr said he was removing his ministers because the Iraqi government refuses to set a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops. The U.S. military reported the death of seven American troops. All the papers go inside with the Senate judiciary committee postponing the testimony by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, scheduled for today, until Thursday because of the killings at Virginia Tech. Meanwhile, the papers get word that Kyle Sampson, Gonzales’ former chief of staff, gave more details over the weekend on how the attorney general’s previous statements about the firings of U.S. attorneys might have been inaccurate. In a private interview with congressional investigators, Sampson said Gonzales took part in discussions about the firing of two U.S. attorneys, David Iglesias of New Mexico and Carol Lam of San Diego. In addition, Sampson said that Gonzales told him that President Bush had complained about Iglesias. The LAT fronts, and everyone mentions, the Pulitzer Prize winners. The only newspaper to win more than one prize was the WSJ, which received the public service award for its stories on the backdating of stock options and the international reporting Pulitzer for its series on the effects of China’s emerging capitalism. The LAT got the award for explanatory reporting in recognition of its series that looked into the degradation of the world’s oceans. The NYT won the feature writing prize for its stories about an immigrant imam in the United States. The Boston Globe picked up a national reporting award for a series of stories about Bush’s use of “signing statements.” Lawrence Wright won the general nonfiction prize for his book, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, and Cormac McCarthy got the fiction award for the novel The Road. Daniel Politi writes “Today’s Papers” for Slate. He can be reached at todayspapers@slate.com.

  Today’s Papers Death, Taxes, and Dubya, Too By M.J. Smith Posted Monday, April 16, 2007, at 6:21A.M. E.T. The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times lead with the release of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ testimony a full two days ahead of a key Senate hearing on the controversy over fired U.S. attorneys. The Washington Post‘s top story is Sunday’s campaign-finance filings, showing Hillary Clinton with the most overall money in her account but trailing Barack Obama for primary fund-raising. The Wall Street Journal tops its world-wide news box with a series of bombs killing 45 in Shiite areas of Baghdad, but also goes high with late word that troubled lender Sallie Mae has agreed to be sold into private ownership. USA Today leads with a survey showing 70 percent of school children in a Baghdad neighborhood have symptoms of trauma, including bed-wetting and stuttering. The LAT‘s Gonzales story notes that Justice Department officials released the testimony on their own rather than wait for Chuck Schumer to do it for them as the two sides jockey for pre-hearing message control. A justice spokesman tells the paper the written testimony was due in to the Senate 48 hours before the hearing. As for the text itself, Gonzales says he has “nothing to hide.” He also apologizes for “my missteps that have helped fuel the controversy” and tries to address previous contradictions in his comments about the firings, including an earlier statement that he was not involved in discussions on the issue. He sticks by his account that much of the work was handled by former chief of staff D. Kyle Sampson. Schumer and others, including Republican Sen. Arlen Specter, dismiss the testimony as not enough. Schumer pointed to statements from Michael Battle, former director of the executive office for U.S. attorneys, that he said showed further contradictions in Gonzales’ story. The papers note that Gonzales published an op-ed piece in the WP on Sunday previewing his testimony, and that the hearing may be his last chance to save his job. The NYT draws parallels between Gonzales’ case and Paul Wolfowitz’s situation at the World Bank, with growing calls for his resignation over a transfer that resulted in a hefty salary for his girlfriend. The NYT is the only paper to front a Wolfowitz story, and its editorial page today called for him to resign. Campaign finance reports were due in yesterday, and while Hillary Clinton came out on top in total money, the story gets far more complicated. She trailed Barack Obama in money raised specifically for the primary campaign, and the WP notes that Obama seems to have far more donors who have not yet “maxed out” their contribution amounts. Clinton was also helped by a $10 million transfer from her Senate campaign account, the papers say. The NYT’s campaign-finance story focuses on Obama receiving donations from former Clinton contributors, including a few who slept in the Lincoln bedroom. But, as the story points out, this isn’t so surprising considering it’d be difficult to find a Dem contributor who didn’t have ties to the Clintons in the 1990s. Overplayed, perhaps? It’s tax time, of course, and the NYT and WP front tax-related features. The NYT looks at the increasing number of illegal immigrants filing taxes in hopes it will help them one day earn legal status, while the WP focuses on small-business tax cheats. The paper highlights the case of a guy who claimed less than $8,000 in taxable income from his family’s two nail salons but somehow wound up blinged out. The NYT flags an insightful piece out of Iraq, where well-armed and apparently trained Sunni insurgents are increasingly setting up in Baquba, north of Baghdad. The paper says what’s happened in Baquba is in many ways the opposite of what has occurred in Baghdad, where Shiite militias terrorized and forced out Sunnis. The Internet as terrorist recruiting ground gets front-page play at the LAT. The story looks at a 22-year-old Moroccan, the son of a diplomat, who is alleged to have become a “media guy” for al-Qaida in Iraq and something of a pioneer in Internet terrorism plotting. The WSJ lays out on its front the strange tale of a Kenyan runner who became a Bahrainian citizen to earn more dough as an athlete, only to be rejected later by the country’s authorities because he competed in—and won—a marathon in Israel. The story describes an apparently common practice of Gulf states enticing skilled African runners to take up citizenship as a way of boosting the countries’ sports prestige. The WP visits the notorious Rocinha favela in Rio de Janeiro for a front-page feature and describes the heavy violence involving minors there. The story offers these figures: “From 2002 through 2006, 729 Israeli and Palestinian minors were killed as a result of the violence in Israel and the occupied territories. … During the same period in Rio de Janeiro, 1,857 minors were reported murdered.” Elsewhere, the NYT reports on polar bear hunting in Russia, and why this may be a good thing. And the papers note that many baseball players, including the entire Los Angeles Dodgers roster, wore number 42 on their jerseys yesterday to honor Jackie Robinson. If you’re unclear on why, go here for your homework assignment. M.J. Smith is a writer based in Paris.

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