Shooting on Virginia Tech campus

[Miss Neecerie]

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/16/vtech.shooting/index.html

obviously the details are changing still, so the article might not be the latest.

But my heart goes out to all the families. Such a tragedy

 

[Feraud]

I just saw the news in an elevator.
Young people attending school and having to suffer this. Terrible.

 

[warbird]

Very sad indeed. I wish folks who are hell bent on killing themselves, would just do it and not take innocent lives with them. We are all vulnerable anytime, no matter where we live, even in rural Virginia. If someone has hate in their heart and is evil enough and willing to die they can harm other people.

It is a simple fact of the world and very difficult to accept.

 

[czack]

Tragic, I feel for the famlies.

 

[Kimberly]

This is so tragic and I will never understand what would cause someone to do something like this. It is very sad to hear.

 

[Nick D]

Every time I see a headline, the number has risen

My wife was going to school in Littleton when Columbine happened, so this hits kind of close to home.

Thoughts and prayers to them and their families.

Dona nobis pacem.

 

[Kim_B]

So, so sad. It troubles me deeply to think that our children and young adults can't even attend school any more and be safe.

 

[CanadaDoll]

Horrible, I hope the students, and families have support through this, they're definitely in my thoughts.

 

[Kimberly]

I was just watching the news on this and had to turn it off. The journalists want the students to be angry (they are still in shock so are not angry yet). Or they want to know if they saw anyone getting shot and all of the morbid details that feeds into the 24/7 new cycle. This is why I can't watch the news anymore.

 

[Mike K.]

As a Virginia Tech Alumnus, I am shocked and saddened by this news. My friends who work on campus are safe, and my prayers are with those families who have lost loved ones.

 

[Diamondback]

Kimberly, that's the kind of stuff (aside from my boss moving on to other places) that put me out of journalism: that agenda-driven sensationalism.

Those in the hospital have my prayers for swift recoveries, and those who were murdered and their families have my thoughts and prayers also.

 

[Paisley]

I haven't watched any of the news reports, either. Watching it won't do me or the victims or the families any good.

I did happen to hear some psychologist on the TV say, "Someone who does this sort of thing has emotional problems," or words to that effect. What would we do without experts?

 

[Daisy Buchanan]

This really is shocking! I've been staying away from the news reports as well. I watched for a few minutes, but as Kimberly stated, all the reporters want is to interview people who saw it or are emotional. They can't just report that everyone on campus is in shock, that would be to boring for the evening news. I have a few news programs that I watch regularly that I have found to be pretty even keeled, well as far as news programs go. I also tend to watch a few different channels just so I can attempt to get both sides of the story. I take all the "facts" and "opinions" (we know that news programs aren't supposed to give opinions, but they are mostly all incredibly biased) that these different programs give, I try to weed through them all and make up my own mind. This can be funny to watch at times, for one channel will report on a story with some details, and another will report on that very same story with completely different details. Nobody can get the full story anymore if they only watch one channel or read just one paper, there's just too much one sided biased story telling for anybody to be able to form a completely valid conclusion with the "facts" from only one news source.
OOOps, I went on a babble fest again!! Sorry guys, I'm a bit passionate when it comes to the media.

What I did hear on the few minutes of news that I watched was that this person who went on this rampage had only 2 hours before murdered a couple in a dorm room. The earlier police investigation had ruled it a double suicide, or suicide/homicide. Whatever the case, if they had only had the time to investigate a little more in depth, they might have realized that their was a killer at large, and they could have beefed up campus security. If this had been done who knows how many lives would have been saved. The particular news camera had gotten hold of a video that a witness had taken on their cell phone recorder. They kept playing it over and over again. It was so disturbing to watch, and I felt it to be a bit disrespectful to the people involved in this event. I wonder how much they paid the kid who recorded the tragedy. I wonder if when he was recording it he was thinking "hmm, I wonder what news station I will sell this to". I think, for investigative purposes, that having a recording of this is a good thing. But, if I was standing nearby watching all of this unfold in front of me, I don't know if I'd have enough wits about me to take out my cell and record it. I'd be a bit too concerned for all the people being shot and killed, as well as for my own safety as well. I don't want to think the worst of a total stranger, but it's hard not to think of what his/her motivation might have been.
I too heard a "expert" on the news. A criminology professor from Northeaster University. He spoke of the earlier mentioned double murder and said something to the effect of "If this guy had just murdered two people, why would he stay in such close proximity to the scene of the crime, most other people in this case would flee?" "Obviously, due to this behavior, we can assume that this man really had psychological problems." I think Paisley put it best in her statement "What would we do without experts"!!! I'm so glad I watched the few minutes of reporting that I did, or I would have never known that the shooter had psychological problems. Wow, I feel so enlightened by having this knowledge!!!

My thoughts and prayers are with all the injured, the murdered, the families and friends of all those affected by this horrible event. We live in a great country, we have so many things to be thankful for. We are a civilized country and for the most part an intelligent land. When something like this happens in our great land, it hits hard. I hate to hear about this sort of thing happening anywhere, but in our own home it is truly shocking. G-d bless everyone near or far who has been somehow touched by this tragedy.

 

[Samsa]

It's almost 1am here in Michigan and I can't sleep. I keep going from news site to news site, looking to see if there have been any developments. I can't help but think what the students who survived and the families of the deceased are going through right now. I'll never understand what allows people to do this sort of thing to each other. Ugh.

 

[Dan G]

This is crazy.... My prayers go out to them...

 

[Benny Holiday]

This shocking story was the first news I woke up to on the radio this morning. What an awful tragedy. My heart goes out to those poor children and their families.

 

[Chanfan]

So, so sad. It troubles me deeply to think that our children and young adults can't even attend school any more and be safe.

It certainly is very, deeply tragic, and my thoughts go out to the families. But…

It's headline news, in part, precisely because it's rare (and thank goodness). It IS a terrible, saddening evet, and we can learn from it - but I hope we (as a society) can keep level headed about these type of incidents. Actions can and should be taken to improve safety, but by and large, our children and young adults are, indeed, safe in our schools.

And it's certainly not a case of "any more" - as sadly, while rare in terms of the effect on the total population of school goers, they do happen regularly. The previous worst shooting was in 1966, and the (still) worst school mass murder was in 1927.

 

[PADDY]

A tragedy.

Our thoughts and prayers are with them all during this terrible and tragic time.

 

[Kim_B]

It certainly is very, deeply tragic, and my thoughts go out to the families. But…

It's headline news, in part, precisely because it's rare (and thank goodness). It IS a terrible, saddening evet, and we can learn from it - but I hope we (as a society) can keep level headed about these type of incidents. Actions can and should be taken to improve safety, but by and large, our children and young adults are, indeed, safe in our schools.

And it's certainly not a case of "any more" - as sadly, while rare in terms of the effect on the total population of school goers, they do happen regularly. The previous worst shooting was in 1966, and the (still) worst school mass murder was in 1927.

I'm not speaking solely to the incident of school shootings or the like, I'm speaking in a more general sense of kids/young people being able to bring questionable objects into a school building in the first place. When I was in high school, we were on lock down a couple times because some one had called in a bomb threat. Where the heck does this come from? When I went to school every morning, I never once considered that this might be the place where I'm shot/stabbed/sliced with a box cutter/blow up/etc.

I don't want to start any kind of debate or upset any one...I'm just speaking from my own experiences...I've never been witness to anything as horrifying as what these young people went through yesterday - Thank God - but I do know how I felt when I was in school and being told we couldn't go into the hallways or bathrooms until the police searched high and low because some one called in a bomb threat, or some one planted pipe bombs in the trash cans in the cafeteria at lunch, or that several of my friends were on a hit list from a very disgruntled student...and upon hearing from my 18 year old cousin that a very upset young man brought a loaded gun to her school. I was scared and I didn't feel safe, and neither did she.

 

[LadyStardust]

It's always so hard to let something like this sink in, both the horror and the magnitude. I know all the details, and yet don't want to accept it. My sympathies go out to the vitims, witnesses, and their families.