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A campus in mourning
17/04/2007 09:07 - (SA)
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| Students congregate at the War Memorial Chapel at on the Virginia Tech campus for a vigil. (Kim Raff, AP) |
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Blacksburg, Virginia - The campus of a Virginia university was in mourning on Monday, after a slaying rampage which left at least 32 victims and a gunman dead.
Several hundred students, many of them crying, gathered round the war memorial at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute, or Virginia Tech, as members of the university's famed corps of cadets laid a wreath in brief, sombre memorial service.
The campus remained in lock-down with police visible around a campus beset with throngs of reporters.
The cold and wind prevented a candle-lit vigil, but did not keep students from erecting a makeshift memorial in the shape of the institution's logo, where they left messages to remember those who died in the worst US campus shooting ever.
Jesse, 22, a third-year engineering student who did not want to give his last name, said he signed his name to the maroon and orange memorial sign.
"I don't know what else to say," he told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa. From a nearby building after the shootings occurred, he could see people being loaded into an ambulance, and decided to donate blood to do what he could to help.
Panic and fear
Throughout the day in television interviews, students described their panic and fear as they tried to flee the shootings, which began in a student dorm at 07:15 and ended two-and-a-half hours later in a classroom building.
Police and university officials emphasised that it's not clear if the two incidents were connected, and came under fire during a press conference for not adequately informing the campus about the first shooting before the second took place.
At least 15 people were injured and taken to local hospitals, university president Charles Steger said in broadcast remarks.
The massacre is being called the worst campus shooting in US history, and was more gruesome than the 2002 school shooting in Erfurt, Germany, where 17 died; the 1999 Columbine High School massacre in Colorado that took 15 lives; and the 1996 school slaughter of 16 children, ages five and six, in Dunblane, Scotland.
In 2005, terrorists seized a school in Beslan, Russia. When police stormed the building in a massive firefight, 333 hostages and police, including 186 school children and all but one of the terrorists, died.
"Schools should be places of safety and sanctuary and learning," said US President George W Bush in a message of condolence to parents and the campus. "When that sanctuary is violated the impact is felt in every American classroom and every American community."
Gunshots
A student eyewitness, Jamal Albarghouti, captured footage on his cellphone of police advancing on Norris Hall, and told CNN that police used a "bomb or something" to open one of the doors.
In the background of the footage, gunshots could be heard, and the loud scream of a policeman running toward him trying to get him to seek safety. Albarghouti, a Palestinian born on the West Bank who grew up in Saudi Arabia, said Blacksburg was a beautiful small town until Monday's violence.
Another student described to CNN how a group of 20 students, including himself, sought refuge in a teacher's office. Afterwards, "we were told to keep our hands above our heads and run out of the building".
"Norris Hall was a tragic and sorrowful crime scene," said Steger. "We are in the process of identifying victims. This will take some time."
- SAPA
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