Virginia Tech Says Shots Fired on Campus

Did they say an eyewitness gave the clothing descriptions etc?
 
Answering my own question

Witnesses reported to police the shooter fled on foot heading toward the Cage, a parking lot near Duck Pond Drive. At that parking lot, a second person was found. That person is also deceased.
 
the description was white male, gray sweatpants and a maroon hoodie, and a backpack. describes at least half the male population on campus
 
vtnews Virginia Tech News
Final exams that were originally scheduled for Friday will take place on Saturday, Dec. 10 at their originally scheduled times & locations.
:bleh:
 
law enforcement officials would not confirm that the second person found dead in a parking lot was the gunman, though they did say a weapon had been found.
A weapon was found near the second body, the university said in a news release on its website.

“We’re all trying to figure out what is going on,” said Larry Hincker, a school spokesman.
When asked directly if the gunman was still on the loose, Virginia State Police Sgt. Bob Carpentieri suggested that the media “read between the lines.”
“I really can't give you a specific answer,” he said. “I think investigators feel confident they have located the person" responsible for the shooting.
 
the candle light vigil tonight at 8 on the drillfield is for the officer, there was no mention of the second "victim"
 

Slain Virginia Tech officer identified

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Officer Deriek Crouse​


BLACKSBURG, Va., Dec. 8, 2011 –Virginia Tech Police have identified the officer murdered today during a traffic stop on campus as Deriek W. Crouse, 39, of Christiansburg. He joined the Virginia Tech Police Department on Oct. 27, 2007, and served in the patrol division. He is survived by his wife, five children and step-children, and his mother and brother.
He received his law enforcement certification on Feb. 12, 2008, from the Cardinal Criminal Justice Academy. Officer Crouse was trained as a Crisis Intervention Officer, General Instructor, Firearms Instructor, Defensive Tactics instructor and most recently completed training for Advance Law Enforcement Rapid Response and Mechanical and Ballistic Instructor.
Officer Crouse was a member of the Virginia Tech Police Emergency Response Team since February 2011. He received an award in 2008 for his commitment to the department’s Driving Under the Influence efforts.
He formerly worked at the New River Valley Jail, the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Department, and was a U.S. Army veteran.
Funeral arrangements will be announced at later date.
 
Letter from President Steger to the campus community


BLACKSBURG, Va., Dec. 8, 2011 – Dear Colleagues: It is with a deep – and regrettably familiar – sense of sadness that I write to you. Once again, the campus and the community that we love so well have been visited by senseless violence and tragic loss. Tragedy again struck Virginia Tech in a wanton act of violence where our police officer, Deriek Crouse, was murdered during a routine traffic stop. My heart goes out to his family who will surely feel most keenly, in the days and months and years ahead, the profound loss that today’s events have brought to pass. We extend our deepest sympathies and condolences to his family and to his colleagues in the police department.





But my heart goes out also to all of you, members of a strong and tightly-knit community that has had the sad misfortune to have weathered these storms before. I have been, and will continue to be, proud of how you have risen to the occasion time and time again, growing stronger in your bond and in your loyalty to one another and to the Hokie Nation.

We must also acknowledge that the bond we feel most strongly in these times is borne of sorrow, and that sorrow demands that we turn to one another for solace. I encourage you to seek out consolation in the company of your fellow Hokies, those who understand how these events, tragic though they are, shape us into better people.

The Virginia Tech community has been admirably served by its outstanding police department. Now, one who had sworn to serve and protect us has fallen, and we can pay no greater tribute than to pledge to serve and protect one another, as the spirit of Ut Prosimcalls us to do.

Sincerely and with deepest sorrow,

Charles W. Steger
 
Virginia Tech shooter found dead after killing campus police officer: reports
Dec 8, 2011 – 10:08 PM ET
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Chris Keane / Reuters
Law enforcement officers at the site where a Virginia Tech police officer was shot and killed.


A gunman ambushed and killed a campus police officer and was later reported to have been found dead on Thursday at Virginia Tech University, the site of one of the worst shooting rampages in U.S. history.




Authorities declared the campus safe and lifted a lock-down after a nearly four-hour manhunt, seeming to lend credence to television news reports that a body found in a Virginia Tech parking lot was that of the shooter.

Police at a televised news conference declined to say whether they suspected a murder-suicide and offered no motive for the crime, citing an ongoing investigation.

“Today tragedy again struck Virginia Tech with a wanton act of violence where a police officer was murdered during a routine traffic stop,” Virginia Tech President Charles Steger told reporters. “Words don’t describe our feelings.”

The place where the officer was shot is in a parking lot in the shadows of the Virginia Tech football stadium. Small groups of students stood nearby as police removed yellow tape from around the crime scene on Thursday evening.

Second-year student Fuller Hoepner, 19, said he stayed inside his apartment after he saw the school’s emergency message this afternoon: “shots fired.”

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A Virginia Tech student places flowers for the Virginia Tech police officer who was killer earlier on campus at Virginia Tech University Blacksburg, Virginia.


“We did not move. We watched the news all day,” he said.

The incident evoked grim memories of April 2007 when a mentally deranged student killed 32 people and wounded 25 before committing suicide on the school’s rural campus in the Shenandoah Valley about 250 miles southwest of Washington. It was the deadliest attack by a single gunman in U.S. history.

A few dozen students gathered on Thursday evening at a memorial for that attack, talking quietly among themselves. At a stone memorializing one of the victims, a student left a note on orange paper. It read: “We are the hokies,” the name of the school’s sports teams. “We will prevail.”

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Lockdown: Students talk on their cell phones and take pictures in Blacksburg Virginia Thursday

In Thursday’s incident, the gunman walked up and shot to death a four-year veteran of the campus police force during a routine traffic stop, police said.

The man then fled on foot toward a nearby parking lot, and a body was later found there along with a gun, police said.

But Sergeant Bob Carpentieri of the Virginia State Police would not confirm the second body was that of the unidentified gunman.

He said, however, that investigators were looking at the possibility the shooter was linked to an armed robbery earlier in the day in the nearby town of Radford, Virginia.

Police, some in combat gear with assault rifles, swarmed the campus after the shooting, while students and faculty were ordered to hunker down inside university buildings and dormitories.

‘ACTIVE THREAT’ ENDS

Hours later, the university declared an end to an “active threat” on campus and told people to “resume normal activities.”

During the lock-down, parents of students sought frantically to locate their children through cell phones and social networking sites.

“Right now it’s kind of scary and hectic around here that this is happening again,” Matthew Spencer, a first-year Virginia Tech student, told a local NBC station before the all-clear was given.

U.S. House of Representatives Republican Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia was among the first members of Congress to weigh in. “Such violence is never easy to explain, and cuts to our core – especially on a campus that has experienced such grief in the past,” he said.

Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell said: “I am deeply saddened by today’s news of another tragedy affecting the Virginia Tech community. Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of those impacted by these shootings.”

The school, formally known as Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, was criticized for its slow response to the 2007 incident and has since put a campus-wide alert system in place.

Third-year student Allison Pisieczko, who was taking an exam on campus when the alert went out, said the school did a good job of notifying students and keeping them safe.

“There were police everywhere,” Pisieczko said. “They were sending messages all day long.”

Autumn semester final exams that were scheduled for Friday were postponed.

Student Elizabeth Sullivan said about 200 students were sent to the second floor of the Squires Student Center from the ground floor about an hour after the shooting.

Shortly afterward, a SWAT team arrived to pat down each student and check every bag in the building.
“I was pretty nervous at first. I didn’t really know what was going on,” Sullivan told a local NBC television station.

She said most students had been keeping in touch with their families through Facebook and Twitter.

The 2007 Virginia Tech massacre renewed a chorus of calls for tougher gun control laws, particularly in the U.S. Congress.

Those calls did not get far since Republican lawmakers have traditionally opposed gun control and Democrats, having been burned on the issue politically, did not push it.

Since taking office in January 2009, President Barack Obama has shied away from stiffer gun laws despite demands for it by members of his largely liberal base.

Article from: http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/1...-after-killing-campus-police-officer-reports/
 
Police spokeswoman Corinne Geller said investigators are confident they know the shooter’s identity, but they are waiting for final confirmation from a medical examiner before they release it. They know he wasn’t a student, but they don’t why he targeted Crouse.

“That’s very much the fundamental part of the investigation right now,” Geller said at a news conference. It’s likely the shooter was the same man who stole a rental car at gunpoint earlier Thursday in Radford, about 15 miles from Blacksburg, Geller said. Crouse had pulled over a car driven by a student and was stopped on a campus parking lot with that car in front of his cruiser, Geller said. The driver has been very helpful to investigators, she said.

Crouse was sitting in his cruiser when the gunman walked up and shot him. Geller declined to say if the officer was wearing body armor or where exactly he was shot. He was not able to return fire, she said. Authorities have in-car video from Crouse’s cruiser that shows a man with a handgun at the officer’s car at the time of the shooting. The gunman fled on foot and went to nearby greenhouses, where investigators say he changed out of a pullover and wool cap and left them behind with his backpack.

Geller said a deputy sheriff on patrol later noticed a man at the back of another parking lot about a half-mile from the shooting. The man was by himself, looking around furtively and acting “a little suspicious.” The officer drove around to approach him, lost sight of the man and then found him on the ground. The man appeared to have a self-inflicted gunshot wound and a handgun was nearby.

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so it was obviously planned to some degree.. if he had a change of clothes ready and stuff? crazy
 
Very interesting... and sad. The officer has a wife and 5 kids... so messed up :(
 
as best i can tell, at least amongst the graduate students, life has returned to normal on campus. Most of us were either off campus or in offices yesterday for reading day and my dept is in two buildings at the corner of campus diagonally opposite from where McComas and Cage lot are, about as far away as you can get from everything and still be on campus
 
they were fine with it, i called both of them when i got the initial alert letting them know i was in my apartment with the door locked. I live just across the street from campus but by the buildings for my dept so i was still pretty far away from it. Neither of them knew there was anything going on until i called, it took a while for the news stations in MD to pick it up and from what i heard the news stations in boston didnt actually mention anything about it until the 11pm broadcast
 
Yeah, they didn't break from our stupid judge shows in Atlanta to even mention it. I wasn't impressed.
 
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