why aren't we allowed to talk about the VT shooting?

[Sijray21]

i misread your comment too, Kaan - relax. my first thought was, "why would he want this to happen at JMU?" I understand now after Gerald's post.

All i know is i hope i hear back from Mike and a couple of other friends at VT...

[BLAIR]

some people on here need to chill out.. get laid.. something.. DAMN.. keep it on topic... take your fights to PM

[Hunter]

I just hope that everyone's friends and family are ok. It's a sad sad situation and I just pray that no here gets any bad news.

[DRYFT]

Thank god, but it looks like everyone we know made it out alright. Appreciate you guys showing your concerns on the CCVT boards as well, crazy day for everyone.

[PDenbigh]

Univ. of Tenn. just got a bomb threat, at least 1 dorm is evacuated. F'ing people need to get a life.

Not overreacting, but you JMU guys keep your eyes open for more dumbass copycats.

[JustinG]

shotgun is loaded......im ready for armageddon

[Goodspeed]

Lets leave the tough guy internet stuff out of this and just keep those hurt by today's events in our thoughts. It just goes to show how easily someone could do this, at VT, at JMU, pretty much anywhere. Campus today was pretty saddened, everyone has the news on, talking of what happened...it was eery going to class thinking about someone walking in with a gun. I think this raises a lot of questions about our safety and society in general, but most of all, at least right now lets just keep our thoughts on the victims of all this

[Feersty]

My brother is alright. I dread seeing the list of victims though. My prayers go out to all affected by this.

[Nick325is]

Lets leave the tough guy internet stuff out of this and just keep those hurt by today's events in our thoughts. It just goes to show how easily someone could do this, at VT, at JMU, pretty much anywhere. Campus today was pretty saddened, everyone has the news on, talking of what happened...it was eery going to class thinking about someone walking in with a gun. I think this raises a lot of questions about our safety and society in general, but most of all, at least right now lets just keep our thoughts on the victims of all this

Well said Goodspeed.

My thoughts and prayers go out to everyone involved in this tragedy today.


-Nick

[Vkng]

I graduated from VT in December, but thought I'd thank you guys for coming to our boards.

[WRXtranceformed]

With more and more of the details being released, I'm very surprised that they didn't keep the campus locked down after the first shooting and cancel classes for the rest of the day. That is a pretty big oversight; you'd think that the local police would have learned from what happened in August.

Keep those people who are still in the hospital / going through surgery in your thoughts and prayers... hopefully the death toll doesn't rise anymore =/

[Vkng]

Given their information, and the timing of when they found out it actually was a shooting, the best idea would NOT to have been to cause a panic and send them back in the direction of the original shooting. People were already on their way to class, enough officers were not on the scene to manage traffic into campus, so the best thing was to keep people where they were (in or on their way to class).

With the amount of people, issuing a complete lockdown on short notice is near impossible.

Besides, he had 2 weapons, enough ammo, and according to some reports body armor and chains to lock the doors. He knew what he was going to do, and nothing the university could have done would have stopped him from killing anyone else.

[Goodspeed]

Thats what I think as well...as the VT pres. said in his address, locking down the campus is like locking down a small city...with so many people in transit and in different locations (not checking their email or listening to the radio etc) its virtually impossible to get everyone out of harms way. Unfortunately I don't think theres anything they could've done to prevent this. With over 2000 acres, hundreds of buildings, and 26000 students, a man on such a lethal mission is bound to succeed.

Also I heard the police chief talking on the news that the first incident in the dorm was unrelated to the second shooting; that the first shooting suspect fled the campus and was apprehended off campus, did anyone else hear this, is it true?

[WRXtranceformed]

That's all debatable. It's easy to say how difficult it is to do this and do that, but in reality that is their job. They locked down the campus fine during the first shooting when it was a prison escapee, how hard would it be to do it again? There was a two hour differential between the two shootings, and they never found the whereabouts of the first shooter in the first place. Anything is possible with the right motivation, and I'd think that having lives at stake would be the strongest motivation imaginable.

Would you feel comfortable keeping classes open after a shooting that occurred in the school that you were responsible for protecting? Especially when you haven't located the shooter? No fucking way. Sure, I don't know if anyone even knows if they're connected, but you've got to create control until you maintain control. I don't even work in law enforcement and that's a no brainer for me... that's a rookie level management decision. Even when I was managing construction, I encountered serious (but not anywhere on the same level of seriousness as today) situations and completely shut down my jobsite until I knew the danger was over. Irregardless, I had lives in my hands and recognized the danger... you'd think the police would know this better than anyone.

[WRXtranceformed]

And please, don't assume that I'm blaming any student / faculty deaths on the local police in Blacksburg ... I just don't buy it that everything was done to prevent disaster on that campus. If someone wants to kill other people they will, but if you can prevent them from strolling into a crowded classroom of college students by cancelling classes and locking down campus, every effort should be made to make that happen.

[Goodspeed]

As the wind whipped through the campus on Monday night, a steady stream of students from West Ambler Johnston carried suitcases, backpacks and other personal items -- one held a large stuffed dog nicknamed Hokie after the school mascot -- to find someplace else to sleep.

They said they couldn't bear to spend the night in the dorm.

[Hunter]

It was said on the news earlier that the police were questioning their "person of interest" from the first shooting when the second one occured. Obviously the knew a tragic situation had occured, but as far as they knew it was a lone incident and they thought they had a suspect in custody. They sure don't want students swarming crime scene while police are trying to figure out what happened.

I just don't think you can really fault them for not seeing the largest mass murder in american history before it happened. Yes, it's their job to keep everyone safe and in hindsight it's easy to say things should have happened differently, but this really was unlike anything we've ever seen before.

Even if they did shut down the campus who's to say he couldn't of done the same thing in one of the dorms? I think it's hard to say how succesful a lock down would be becasue when they issued the lock down in august there was a man trying not to get caught, where as in this case there was a man doing anything he could to kill as many people as possible. The latter is not only more tragic, but also much more difficult to stop.

[DRYFT]

Latest info says there was a note he left behind several pages long.

Thought this image was fitting.

[white_2kgt]

Where a person has no disregard for their own life, there is NOTHING that can be done to stop them from committing the most heinous acts. This has been true since the dawn of time. There's nothing VT could have done to prevent what happened. I'm sure some good security measure will come in the weeks/months/years to come that will benefit all, and I'm also sure there will be some down right stupid things done as well (RE airports and having to take off shoes b/c one dumb ass decided to try and light his on fire). The only reason law enforcement works is because of the will to survive, take that away and law enforcement means nothing, it's actually a hindrance (at times an individual w/ a gun has more rights to shoot somebody than a cop does) once a person doesn't care if he lives/dies or goes to jail, they can accomplish just about anything they want.

[ScottyB]

once a person doesn't care if he lives/dies or goes to jail, they can accomplish just about anything they want.

so true. regardless of any implemented rules this would have happened.