posted
Yes. I'm an alum. I have friends who are still there (hopefully fine - I haven't heard from them, but they'd have no reason to be near any of the shooting sites). I also have a little cousin who's a senior there. She's okay, but one of her friends was shot. I don't know how badly. But this is not a good day.
It's also not the first shooting at VT this year - an escaped prisoner killed a sheriff's deputy on the first day of classes in the fall.
Posts: 959 | Registered: Jan 2002
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Short summary is that 21 have been killed (as well as the shooter in the yahoo story above) and 21 wounded on the campus.
The story started out earlier with one dead, the shooter at large, and the campus on lockdown. The second series of shootings happened later and at a different building. I really hope this wasn't something that was made worse by a simple mistake like lifting the lockdown too soon, or letting the wrong people out.
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A bill to allow handguns on campus was struck down last year, which seems bitterly ironic now.
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I read an article from foxnews.com that said the two shootings, the one at Ambler Hall and the other at the engineering building were not known to be related. That seems like an extraordinary coincidence, if true.
quote:Originally posted by aspectre: "A bill to allow handguns on campus was struck down last year, which seems bitterly ironic now."
Yep, only the NRA protects the right of maniacs to slaughter.
I am going to hope beyond hope that -- if not just for some semblance of respect for the situation -- we wait at least a single page before turning this into a dumb, emotionally heated gun control debate.
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rumor from a source of a source states that psycho confronted girlfriend who was pregnant from another man, shot her, then went to engineering bldg to kill man who impregnated her but did not have clear info on who he was other than an engineering student. This is a source, from a source at best so it could be wrong, but it does go in line with rumors that it was related to a domestic girlfriend/boyfriend situation.
My brother is incensed as he was eight years ago, with what in his words, was a lollygagging police force that was not remotely aggressive enough in dealing with the situation. It appears there is clear video of police walking while gunfire could be heard repeatedly, if this is true, this horrific incident has to be used to rectify SOP when it comes to these crisis. We've had too many psycho's get hours of room to kill until they're exhausted, if this is due to SOP, than it has to be changed. The kids were defenseless, the police they're only hoping, if they took forever getting after this nut job, that is something that simply can't stand, and must be changed so something like this can't happen again, at least in this fashion (there will always be nutjobs, our only recourse is to create operating procedures that can kill these murderous swine before they've killed two dozen freaking people over more than 2 hours of freaking time).
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My intention was NOT to start any kind of debate or discussion about gun rights. I was simply remarking on how a measure was passed to keep the kids safe and failed miserably. I am the wife of a professor and I know dozens of families who have kids at VT - I am sick about this. The reputation of the Hokeyville police is well-known.
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quote:The bloodbath took place at opposite sides of the 2,600-acre campus, beginning at about 7:15 a.m. at West Ambler Johnston, a coed dormitory that houses 895 people, and continuing about two hours later at Norris Hall, an engineering building, authorities said.
Is there a reason why the school was not closed after the first shootings? Granted, it's a large campus but I'm left with the impression that they didn't even cancel classes.
posted
It sounds (from reports) like the area around the first shooting WAS shut down for a time. But they didn't shut down the entire campus. Don't know how hard that would be to do on a 2,600 acre campus -- that is a huge area.
quote:My brother is incensed as he was eight years ago, with what in his words, was a lollygagging police force that was not remotely aggressive enough in dealing with the situation.
That is an overly quick rush to judgement, given you are basing it on rumors from friends of friends or videos posted online. These are the people risking their lives to defend the students there - they should get at least some slack, before the facts come out.
quote:I was simply remarking on how a measure was passed to keep the kids safe and failed miserably.
I suspect the measure succeeded. If there were a bunch of panicking college students running around with guns, I'm sure the situation could have been even worse than it ended up being. There could have been scared and otherwise innocent people shooting other people.
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No doubt he's rushing to judgement. I don't disagree Tresopax, but based on available evidence there appears to be a two hour stretch between the initial gunfire and the bulk of the killings, and there are numerous pieces of video showing cops walking while gunfire can be heard. I don't really care much if it's a rush to judgement, I want a hue and cry about this so at the very least SOP in these situations can be changed. The death toll is at 32. It's hard to believe that many would be dead if the reaction had been more aggressive. Of course I could be wrong.
On the second point, agreed, if the law had passed (not having seen the particulars yet) I would imagine there would be a plethora of drunken shootings.
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Somebody said that a guy hid behind a dumpster and took a video of the shootings with his cell phone. I dunno if it is true though.
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I have no idea how things happened on campus or what the right thing to do would be but I wonder if closing the campus and sending people home would really have been the right thing to do? I mean, instead of thousands of students in class, you'd have them all wandering the campus headed home...if you don't know where a gunman is or where he's going would you really just want everyone wandering around outside?
And as far as running, I know my husband said once a citizen complained because they (he's a firefighter) didn't run from the truck to a call. They had to let the person know they are trained NOT to run...to go forward slowly, assessing the situation and the threat level and consider everything before rushing in. So...I'm not excusing the police or anything (haven't seen the video) but I agree with others who said let's hold off on the blame game and rush to judgment here, at least until we know more.
The person most responsible for these deaths is the gunman, after all. If campus security did something wrong, then by all means let's look at that and see if we can improve it but for now, let's not crucify a police force until we know the particulars of the situation.
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But these types of incidents are rapidly changing and so information will continue to come in.
The most recent death toll I've seen is 32. Unbelievable. What a horrible tragedy for those students and their friends and family. Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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posted
Yeah, my bad guys hes dead. I was watching TV and they said that they had a guy detained and they started talking but I have satellite TV and the wind knocked it out so I just assumed it was the guy.
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posted
My kids have friends on campus, some of whom have been in touch with us via instant messenger, etc. They said they were on lockdown right away after the first shooting -- but I'm not sure they (the friends) are clear on the order of events. They seem impossibly young and far away, to me.
quote:Originally posted by Belle: I have no idea how things happened on campus or what the right thing to do would be but I wonder if closing the campus and sending people home would really have been the right thing to do? I mean, instead of thousands of students in class, you'd have them all wandering the campus headed home...if you don't know where a gunman is or where he's going would you really just want everyone wandering around outside?
And as far as running, I know my husband said once a citizen complained because they (he's a firefighter) didn't run from the truck to a call. They had to let the person know they are trained NOT to run...to go forward slowly, assessing the situation and the threat level and consider everything before rushing in. So...I'm not excusing the police or anything (haven't seen the video) but I agree with others who said let's hold off on the blame game and rush to judgment here, at least until we know more.
The person most responsible for these deaths is the gunman, after all. If campus security did something wrong, then by all means let's look at that and see if we can improve it but for now, let's not crucify a police force until we know the particulars of the situation.
See to me, if that's the way they're trained, they need to stop training in that fashion. It seems pretty clear, historically, that in these school shooting situations, caution and prudence are probably a product of the traditional "hostage situation" procedures and are wrong headed. If the history of school shootings tells us anything, it's that the shootings stop when the individual runs out of ammo, or gas, or because suicide by cop is inevitable, they don't stop shooting until they're ready to stop shooting, and the cautious procedures of making sure every last step is taken in order, is the sort of thing that insures that death tolls will be enormously high. It just doesn't work and I'm not blaming the police individuals specifically, obviously they were following procedure. I just think it's obvious that the procedures should be scrapped and new ones put in place to deal with this problem because the procedures as currently used DON'T WORK.
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posted
Report I received from the mother of a VT student is that the shooter's girlfriend lived in the dorm. She wasn't there so he shot the female RA and then escaped the building with the rest of the residents being evacuated. Then he went to the Engineering building where she was supposed to have class, she wasn't there, her classmates couldn't or wouldn't tell him anything, so he lined them up and started executing them.
Posts: 4515 | Registered: Jul 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Belle: I have no idea how things happened on campus or what the right thing to do would be but I wonder if closing the campus and sending people home would really have been the right thing to do? I mean, instead of thousands of students in class, you'd have them all wandering the campus headed home...if you don't know where a gunman is or where he's going would you really just want everyone wandering around outside?
And as far as running, I know my husband said once a citizen complained because they (he's a firefighter) didn't run from the truck to a call. They had to let the person know they are trained NOT to run...to go forward slowly, assessing the situation and the threat level and consider everything before rushing in. So...I'm not excusing the police or anything (haven't seen the video) but I agree with others who said let's hold off on the blame game and rush to judgment here, at least until we know more.
The person most responsible for these deaths is the gunman, after all. If campus security did something wrong, then by all means let's look at that and see if we can improve it but for now, let's not crucify a police force until we know the particulars of the situation.
See to me, if that's the way they're trained, they need to stop training in that fashion. It seems pretty clear, historically, that in these school shooting situations, caution and prudence are probably a product of the traditional "hostage situation" procedures and are wrong headed. If the history of school shootings tells us anything, it's that the shootings stop when the individual runs out of ammo, or gas, or because suicide by cop is inevitable, they don't stop shooting until they're ready to stop shooting, and the cautious procedures of making sure every last step is taken in order, is the sort of thing that insures that death tolls will be enormously high. It just doesn't work and I'm not blaming the police individuals specifically, obviously they were following procedure. I just think it's obvious that the procedures should be scrapped and new ones put in place to deal with this problem because the procedures as currently used DON'T WORK.
I'm going to wait a day before I discuss how ridiculous this comment is.
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posted
Well, graywolfe, we'll have to disagree...because I believe the first thing a rescue worker needs to do is not become a victim himself. My husband is no good to any victim if he's lying on the ground bleeding himself. The cops cannot apprehend a suspect if they allow themselves to be shot by the suspect.
If you have multiple shots firing, the thing to do is not to rush in and present yourself as another target, but rather asses the situation, evacuate any civilians nearby and determine a course of action that minimizes loss of life to the police, the bystanders, and yes even the perpetrator. The worst thing you can do is add yourself to the casulty list. Then, you divert resources away from other victims.
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posted
The Asian man being shown in the pictures with an officer kneeling over him is NOT the shooter. He's a reporter for the school newspaper who was detained and released.
So far most of the kids we know there have checked in, but we just heard that a faculty member is among the dead. I'm devastated.
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I know this is kind of an awful thing to say when people are dead, but I'm selfishly glad it's not Andrew.
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From a different perspective, and while I realise that horrific incidents like this are by no means the norm, I have 5 grandchildren (oldest is 7) living in the US (Utah and Arizona) and things like this keep planting seeds of worry about my grandkids growing up and going to school there. My thoughts are with the families of those poor people.
Posts: 867 | Registered: Dec 2003
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"My intention was NOT to start any kind of debate or discussion about gun rights."
You pulled a gun on campus for fear of "ghoulies and ghosties and long leggedy beasties and things that go bump in the night" even though you were in the company of your 6foot5 husband and two dogs.
"I am sick about this."
So naturally the first thing you think about is your "gun rights".
"Because criminals are well-known to obey the law."
As if criminals would have easy access to absurdly powerful guns without the NRA.
"I am going to hope beyond hope that..."
Sorry, Samprimary. You should know by now that immediately after an incident like this, NRA-types begin proclaiming that we need even more fantasizers running around with concealed weapons.
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posted
I wish every event like this didn't turn into an emotionally charged debate about gun possession and gun control. Sadness, rage, and confusion are not good methods for deciding how we run our society.
There are no easy answers, and trying to find places to lay blame based on emotion and spotty information is pointless and counter productive.
Maybe changes need to be made, but sometimes bad, crazy people cause a lot of damage, no matter what. Don't misplace your anger at senseless killing by directing it at each other.
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quote:So naturally the first thing you think about is your "gun rights".
Flexing those psychic powers again, aspectre? Or do you read tea leaves?
How, exactly, do you know what the first thing to cross Mrs.M.'s mind was when she heard that people she knew might have been killed at Va. Tech?
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Belle: Well, graywolfe, we'll have to disagree...because I believe the first thing a rescue worker needs to do is not become a victim himself. My husband is no good to any victim if he's lying on the ground bleeding himself. The cops cannot apprehend a suspect if they allow themselves to be shot by the suspect.
If you have multiple shots firing, the thing to do is not to rush in and present yourself as another target, but rather asses the situation, evacuate any civilians nearby and determine a course of action that minimizes loss of life to the police, the bystanders, and yes even the perpetrator. The worst thing you can do is add yourself to the casulty list. Then, you divert resources away from other victims.
If shots are being fired and you spend all your time thinking about the situation and analyzing it, you're going to find a dead shooter and a whole facility full of dead men and woman. I disagree. The cops are there to protect and serve, if they are not engaging the individual that is actively in the process of shooting people that minute, that second, does it not follow that as each second passes more and more will be shot dead. My comments are called ridiculous. Seriously. Thirty-two people are believed dead. Thirty-freaking-two. You don't listen to gun fire, and think about how best to make sure 132 don't get shot, you engage the individual and kill him, period.
If some think that's ridiculous, I really don't understand where that attitude is coming from. Could more die through engaging them? Possibly, but it is at least as likely that more could have been saved if more aggressive measures were taken. While a cop laying bleeding on the ground isn't going to help many people, simply waiting for the guy to run out of victims, or bullets while they lay waste to an entire engineering building in order to assess a situation doesn't seem like an effective means of addressing the situation either.
Something needs to be done. If you want to call my comments ridiculous, feel free, but as the procedures currently stand, it appears clear that they are ineffective in stopping these actions before the death toll is enormous. I don't expect an A-Team caliber response of bullets flying everywhere, and I don't expect a charge of the light brigade either, but I would like to think that a guy actively murdering students left and right would be engaged as soon as possible to stop it as soon as possible, it doesn't appear to me that the system used to address these kinds of active crimes does so effectively.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I think it's ridiculous that the guy had two hours to kill 32 people before any law enforcement official even got close enough to do anything at all. To me, I just disagree whole heartedly. The cops are armed, the students aren't, the cops were the only shot the kids had, and it took them two hours. Whether this was on the administration, the procedures, or anything else, it strikes me as absurd that it took that long to accomplish anything, and that this guy was able to shoot what appears to be more than 50 people before anyone may have engaged him. I don't understand why the police are even around if procedures won't allow them to do their jobs and put that guy down, as in dead.
Apprehending him? Out of the question, they needed to be in there, engaging and killing him, not waiting around analyzing, interpreting, ruminating or anything else.
I suppose I'm in the minority here, but I don't mind it. I can't believe that the way this was handled by the administration or the police (not their fault, the procedures fault as far as I can tell)is acceptable to anyone. And btw, this isn't meant to excuse the psycho nut job by any means. We can't control when a psycho nut job decides to do something like this, what we can control is how the authorities handle it, and that's the only thing I'm really concerned with here.
If you disagree with my thinking, just let me know what you think would be a better means of handling this kind of nightmare. I'm open minded, and perhaps anger and rage and blame is motivating me a bit too much, but I am willing to hear anyone out.
Posts: 752 | Registered: Jul 2002
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quote:It appears there is clear video of police walking while gunfire could be heard repeatedly, if this is true, this horrific incident has to be used to rectify SOP when it comes to these crisis.
First, the officers were very likely assigned zones to cover. You don't want your entire force running toward the sound of gunfire, because while they are doing that, the shooter can move. You need to have coverage everywhere he might end up.
This is especially true when there might be two shooters. If one fires and the other doesn't, then the police are drawn off.
You're acting as if the police had full knowledge of what was happening. They didn't. They knew there was a shooter somewhere on campus. They didn't know where. In fact, there were conflicting reports. They needed to spread out and cover a large area. And, when doing that, there's no need for the officers already in their zones to be running.
Further, I've been on the tech campus, and I bet it's impossible to tell the direction a shot is coming from when your near those stone buildings. The officers might run to an echo and be farther away from the shooter.
Staying in your assigned zone is critical - you can cost lives, including your own, when you abandon your post because you think you know best.
Sometimes it will be necessary. Knowing when it is necessary is what separates great officers from good ones. But merely hearing shots elsewhere is not sufficient cause to abandon police procedures in the hopes that a mad rush will stop the shooter.
quote:Maybe I'm wrong, but I think it's ridiculous that the guy had two hours to kill 32 people before any law enforcement official even got close enough to do anything at all.
You are wrong. The guy wasn't shooting for 2 hours. He shot at one place, disappeared, reappeared 2 hours later, and shot again.
At the other side of a 2600 acre campus.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
I did not say he was shooting for two hours, I said he had two hours in which to roam the campus freely. I am fully aware of what happened, I have friends from Va Tech and connected to the campus letting me know what went on, as they find out more information.
And additionally, my main issue here is with the lack of aggressive engagement. I don't really care who occupied what zone. What I care about is defenseless students were being murdered left and right, and there were numerous officers available to engage the suspect, and either for procedural reasons, or some other reason, he was not engaged until more than 50 were shot. Shouldn't that be unacceptable?
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Only if the information we have with hindsight is the same information that was available to the officers at the time of the tragedy.
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quote:I did not say he was shooting for two hours, I said he had two hours in which to roam the campus freely. I am fully aware of what happened, I have friends from Va Tech and connected to the campus letting me know what went on, as they find out more information.
Do you know how hard it is to find someone on a campus that big? You cited the failure of the police to find him in two hours as an indication that there were problems with the way the police handled it.
He "had" 2 hours because the police are not and cannot be omniscient. Could they have done something differently based on what they knew at the time? Maybe. But you have NO way of knowing that other than amateur reports from people who saw a tiny, tiny part of what occurred.
quote:And additionally, my main issue here is with the lack of aggressive engagement. I don't really care who occupied what zone. What I care about is defenseless students were being murdered left and right, and there were numerous officers available to engage the suspect, and either for procedural reasons, or some other reason, he was not engaged until more than 50 were shot. Shouldn't that be unacceptable?
In some situations. Maybe in this one. But not based on what we know, even with your "sources."
I think you vastly underestimate the difficulty of figuring out what is happening in a situation like this. If the police don't know where the shooting is, then running around pell-mell is not going to accomplish anything unless the police get very lucky.
What, exactly, were they supposed to engage? Do you have ANY evidence that once the police knew where - as in the room - the shooter was they wasted time? Or do you just know that one scared little undergraduate took videos of an officer not running when gunfire was heard.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
Thanks Dagonee for giving a little perspective to the situation. I spent 18 years of my life in Radford, VA as a kid growing up, and then a college student. Radford is 15 miles from Blacksburg, and I have numerous close friends who could be injured or, God forbid, dead. This is as close to home as it can get. Further, I have no idea how to find out about my friends until there are official death tolls listed, since I am currently in Reedsport, OR with no email or IM capabilities.
The VT campus is HUGE. Even the military couldn't lock down a campus the size of VT in only 2 hours, provided they had a clear reason to do so. It's sickening to me that there are insensitive jerks with perfect 20/20 hindsight using this board to pass judgement on the campus police force. It is even more sickening that someone can be so horrid as to make this all about "gun control" and stupid political condiderations when the bodies haven't even cooled yet. Some people lack any sense of shame or decorum.
Posts: 786 | Registered: Jun 2003
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posted
graywolfe, I don't think it's rediculous to propose that the police should re-evaluate their procedures and see if there is anything this incident can teach them and improve on those procedures. But I don think you're failing to see that there is significant value to these methodical procedures even in situations like this where a more immediate action MAY have saved lives.
In addition to things that Dag mentioned, consider some of the following:
A bunch of cops run in to save the day only to be gunned down from behind by shooter #2, not only leaving shooter #1 potentially alive to keep killing, but adding a bunch of dead cops to the mess. Especially considering situations such as columbine, where explosives and multiple shooters/weapons were involved.
Cops run in and in the confusion of determining who is hostile they shoot an innocent bystandard. Potentially they've saved some lives but now there will be huge uproar across the country about the police being trigger-happy murderers and the like.
A cop rushes in before he has backup and is taken down by the shooter. now the shooter has another gun, more ammo and the cop's radio to listen for more incoming.
An incomplete net is formed and the shooter is able to slip out and find new victims.
A jittery shooter gets spooked by encroaching police and kills everyone in his room faster and moves on to a new room, or detonates explosives that otherwise he might not get around to detonating...
Given that we supposedly know (after the fact) that it was just one guy, he was confined to one locale and only killing a select number of individuals for information, then the course of action taken might not have been the ideal one. However, there are plenty of other situations where this probably was the best course of action.
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quote:Originally posted by aspectre: "My intention was NOT to start any kind of debate or discussion about gun rights."
You pulled a gun on campus for fear of "ghoulies and ghosties and long leggedy beasties and things that go bump in the night" even though you were in the company of your 6foot5 husband and two dogs.
"I am sick about this."
So naturally the first thing you think about is your "gun rights".
"Because criminals are well-known to obey the law."
As if criminals would have easy access to absurdly powerful guns without the NRA.
"I am going to hope beyond hope that..."
Sorry, Samprimary. You should know by now that immediately after an incident like this, NRA-types begin proclaiming that we need even more fantasizers running around with concealed weapons.
You are an a$$hole. A barely coherent one at that.
Go back under your rock and whisper your paranoid idea to those who care.
(that would be yourself)
Let others, who live in the real world, have time to grieve before crapping all over them with this bullshit.
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posted
Greywolfe, I agree with both sides of the issue. On the other hand, what I think this means is that there has to be two kinds of police officers in this kind of world. SWAT is supposed to be the kind you are talking about. Why were they not immediately on the scene? If they were, why weren't they doing what greywolfe said needed to be done? And, if they don't have any SWAT, how can police stations everywhere get them?
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