US gunman quarrelled before killing 32
A gunman massacred 32 people at a US university, quarrelling with and slaying his girlfriend before calmly gunning down students and then taking his own life in the deadliest shooting rampage in US history.
The gunman was believed to be a student from China who first killed his girlfriend after an argument in a student dormitory and then killed a dormitory supervisor, a fellow student said.
Over two hours later, looking serious but calm and without uttering a word, the man stormed classrooms and massacred 30 more students before turning the gun on himself.
Police would not immediately confirm a motive for the deadly rampage, in which victims were cut down in two attacks two hours apart before Virginia Tech could grasp what was happening and warn students.
Most of those killed were students attending classes at a hall where the gunman apparently used chains to lock the doors and prevent the victims from escaping, officials said.
Fifteen people were wounded, including those shot and students hurt jumping from windows in a desperate attempt to escape the gunfire.
Virginia Tech student Chen Chia-hao told Taiwan cable TV the rampage began after the gunman argued with his girlfriend in a high-rise dormitory building.
Wielding two handguns and carrying multiple clips of ammunition, the killer had first opened fire about 7.15am (2115 AEST) on the fourth floor of the West Ambler Johnston building, officials said.
"They had a big quarrel in the West Ambler Johnston Hall and he shot her. Then the RA (dorm supervisor) came, and he shot the RA," Chen said.
The gunman later stormed Norris Hall, a classroom building less than a kilometre away on the other side of the 1,000 hectare campus.
One student told CBS News the killer walked into his German class and shot a student and professor before systematically shooting nearly all of the other students in the room.
"I hid under the desk and he proceeded to shoot everybody else in the class, practically," said Derek O'Dell, who suffered an gunshot wound in his arm. "There were probably 15 to 20 people in the class and he shot 10 to 15 of them."
He said the gunman, who was about 1.8 metres tall and wearing a maroon hat, fired several shots from a handgun, reloaded and resumed shooting. The man left the room, but returned and fired into the door before leaving again, O'Dell said.
"He didn't say a single word the whole time," witness Trey Perkins told MSNBC.
"He didn't say get down, he didn't say anything. He just came in and started shooting."
By the time police reached the second floor of the building, the firing had stopped and they later found the gunman lying dead in a classroom.
"He opened fire to the back of his head and blew up the front part of his head, which has made it difficult to identify him," Chen said.
Campus police chief Wendell Flinchum said of the killings: "It was probably one of the worst things I've seen in my life."
Television images of terrified students and police dragging bloody victims out of the building revived memories of the infamous Columbine High School massacre in 1999 and is likely to renew heated debate about US gun laws.
The gunman's name was not immediately released, and it was not known if he was a student, but some US reports said he was 24 and that he had arrived in the US last year on a student visa issued in Shanghai.
"Today the university was struck with a tragedy that we consider of monumental proportions," Virginia Tech President Charles Steger said. "The university is shocked and indeed horrified."
But he was also faced with difficult questions about the university's handling of the emergency and whether it did enough to warn students and protect them after the first burst of gunfire.
Some students bitterly complained they got no warning from the university until an email that arrived more than two hours after the first shots rang out.
As the gunman roamed Norris Hall, students jumped from windows in panic. Young people and faculty members carried out some of the wounded themselves, without waiting for ambulances to arrive.
Many found themselves trapped behind chained and padlocked doors. Police commandos with helmets, flak jackets and assault rifles swarmed over the campus. A student used his cell-phone camera to record the sound of bullets echoing through a stone building.
Alec Calhoun, a 20-year-old junior, said he was in a mechanics class when he and classmates heard a thunderous sound from the classroom next door - "what sounded like an enormous hammer".
Screams followed an instant later, and the banging continued. When students realised the sounds were gunshots, Calhoun said, he started flipping over desks for hiding places. Others dashed to the windows of the second-floor classroom, kicking out the screens and jumping from the ledge of Room 204, he said.
"I must've been the eighth or ninth person who jumped, and I think I was the last," said Calhoun. He landed in a bush and ran.
Calhoun said that the two students behind him were shot, but that he believed they survived. Just before he climbed out the window, Calhoun said, he turned to look at the professor, who had stayed behind, perhaps to block the door.
The instructor was killed, he said.
Student Trey Perkins said the gunman barged into the German class room at about 9.50am and opened fire for about a minute and a half, squeezing off about 30 shots.
The gunman first shot the professor in the head and then fired on the students, Perkins said. The gunman had a "very serious but very calm look on his face," he said.
One student, Erin Sheehan, said she played dead to save herself when the gunman burst into her German class two separate times.
"He seemed very thorough about it, getting almost everyone down. I was trying to act dead," she said.
"He left for about 30 seconds, came back in, did almost exactly the same thing. I guess he heard us still talking," Sheehan said describing the shooter as "young looking, Asian, dressed sort of strangely."
Sheehan said the gunman "was just a normal-looking kid, Asian, but he had on a Boy Scout-type outfit. He wore a tan button-up vest, and this black vest, maybe it was for ammo or something."
Students said there were no public-address announcements after the first shots. Many said they learned of the first shooting in an email that arrived shortly before the gunman struck again.
"I think the university has blood on their hands because of their lack of action after the first incident," said student Billy Bason, 18.
University president Steger defended the university's conduct, saying authorities believed that the shooting at the dorm was a domestic dispute and mistakenly thought the gunman had fled the campus.
"We had no reason to suspect any other incident was going to occur," he said.
Steger emphasised that the university closed off the dorm after the first attack and decided to rely on e-mail and other electronic means to spread the word, but said that with 11,000 people driving onto campus first thing in the morning, it was difficult to get the word out.
He said that before the email went out, the university began telephoning resident advisers in the dorms and sent people to knock on doors. Students were warned to stay inside and away from the windows.
Some students and Laura Wedin, a student programs manager at Virginia Tech, said their first notification came in an email at 9.26am, more than two hours after the first shooting.
The email had few details. It read: "A shooting incident occurred at West Amber Johnston earlier this morning. Police are on the scene and are investigating." The message warned students to be cautious and contact police about anything suspicious.
Until Monday, the deadliest shooting in modern US history was in Killeen, Texas, in 1991, when George Hennard ploughed his pickup truck into a Luby's Cafeteria and shot 23 people to death, then himself.
Monday's massacre took place almost eight years to the day after the Columbine High bloodbath near Littleton, Colorado. On April 20, 1999, two teenagers killed 12 fellow students and a teacher before taking their own lives.
Previously, the deadliest campus shooting in US history was a rampage that took place in 1966 at the University of Texas at Austin, where Charles Whitman climbed the clock tower and opened fire with a rifle from the 28th-floor observation deck. He killed 16 people before he was shot to death by police.
A White House spokesman said President George W Bush was horrified and offered his prayers to the victims and the people of Virginia.
"The president believes that there is a right for people to bear arms, but that all laws must be followed," spokeswoman Dana Perino said.
After the shootings, all campus entrances were closed and the university set up a spot for families to reunite with their children.
It was second time in less than a year that the campus was closed because of a shooting.
Last August, the opening day of classes was cancelled when an escaped jail inmate allegedly killed a hospital guard off campus and fled to the Tech area.
A sheriff's deputy involved in the manhunt was killed just off campus. The accused gunman, William Morva, faces capital murder charges.
An Israeli lecturer who died in the massacre saved the lives of several students by blocking the doorway of his classroom from the approaching gunman before he was fatally shot, his wife told Israeli media.
Students of Liviu Librescu, 75, a lecturer in mechanical engineering at Virginia Tech for 20 years, sent emails to his wife telling of how he blocked the gunman's way and saved their lives, said the wife, Marlena Librescu.
She told the NRG news website that her husband loved his job with "all his heart and his soul".
After she was told in a phone call that he was injured, she looked for him in several hospitals, but could not find him.
The couple immigrated to Israel from Romania in 1978 and then moved to Virginia in 1986 for his sabbatical but then decided to stay on, their son, Joe Librescu, told Army Radio
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