In Blacksburg, a dark day descends

BLACKSBURG, Va. - The deadliest shooting spree ever to take place in the U.S. ushered this small college town yesterday into one of the darker days of American history, leaving tearful residents here shaken with grief.

Still stunned by the news that 32 people were fatally shot yesterday on a campus located in a close-knit southern Virginia town, residents are still trying to sort out what appears to be a senseless and brutal crime.

Most here have differing stories about how they first heard the news, but all say it has irrevocably changed their town forever. And after officials presented an extremely hazy timeline of yesterday's events, most residents spent last night without answers to important questions, including whether friends are alive, injured or dead.

Although two had been killed in a dorm and police were called at 7:15 yesterday morning, it took administrators more than two hours to send out 36,000 e-mails to warn the campus community. About 20 minutes after that first e-mail, university police busy investigating the first shooting received word of more shootings at Norris Hall, a classroom, faculty office and research building.

Even students who live in West Ambler Johnston dorm, the site of the first two killings, didn't know much about what had happened when gunfire broke out again in Norris Hall two hours later, where 31 would die in an explosion of gunfire - including the gunman.

"I just woke up and there were cops outside and in the halls, but I figured I might as well go to class," said freshman business major Josh Ehlers, who lives one floor above where the shootings had occurred.

Because police officers wouldn't talk to the students in his dorm, Ehlers said, he was unaware of the magnitude of what had occurred in his building. He certainly didn't know that two people had been shot and killed. He left for class before the university sent out its first round of e-mails.

It was on his way to class that the magnitude hit home, he said, when he heard two gunshots coming from buildings he was headed toward. Suddenly, students came running across the field he was walking across, he said, and police began swarming the area. Still, Ehlers said, he didn't know what was happening.

"People running toward me were saying there had been a stabbing or a shooting, but the cops weren't telling us anything," he said. "I didn't know what scale it was on. I didn't know how bad it was."

After taking some pictures, Ehlers returned to his dorm room and read the university e-mail for the first time explaining the shooting in his own building. At that point, he decided to stay in his room to listen to new reports to figure out what was going on.

Freshman business major Jenn DiMarco, who lives on floor above Ehlers, was also caught entirely off guard by the news, she said.

"I had no idea what was going on until my RA told me I couldn't leave my room," she said. "Then I got a flood of IMs from my friends, my parents were calling me, my relatives were calling me."

DiMarco spent the day yesterday talking to friends and trying to figure out what was going on. The fact that the number of deaths being reported kept increasing throughout the day was the hardest part of dealing with it all, she said.

Like many other people around Blacksburg, DiMarco has many unanswered questions, she said. One of hers is how she didn't hear the shots in her building.

"I wonder how [the shooter] pulled if off," DiMarco said, "Did he have a silencer, or what? It's weird."

"It's just not your normal college experience," she added.

Despite the fact that her dorm and the entire campus have an "eerie feeling" to them, DiMarco said last night that she planned on remaining in her room overnight, unlike many of her friends who she said headed home to be with family.

Across the campus, students could be seen walking with bags and backpacks, preparing to leave the campus. Megan Eckart, Megan Fuson and Kelli Erk, all freshmen and longtime friends from Richmond, were being picked up by Eckart's and Fuson's fathers at a McDonald's just off the campus.

David Eckart and Pete Fuson had decided to drive down and pick their daughters up immediately after they heard the news of the shootings.

"We figured school's going to be closed for a few days, so why have them here watching all the gory news," Pete Fuson said. "It's a little too much for them to stick around."

"As a parent, I was surprised that dorms are so accessible," said David Eckart as he discussed some dorms being unlocked from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. with his daughter. "That's something the administration needs to reconsider."

All three girls were happy that they had someone to pick them up. They had been walking across the campus when the shooting broke out, and they said the idea they could have been near the shooter, and could have easily become victims, was something very hard to grasp.

"It's kind of hard to know where you want to be at this time, but it might be better to get out of here," Erk said.

Later, at a prayer vigil in local St. Mary's Catholic Church last night, students and other community members gathered for Mass, many of them in tears.

Ashley Gorman, a graduate student in education, said the vigil provided her and some of her friends with an opportunity to reflect on the day and spend time with each other.

"It was a shock hearing it on the radio go from one person to 32 in a matter of minutes. It was hard to hear," Gorman said. "The vigil let us think and be together as a campus community."

Jeremy Garrett, a graduate teaching assistant who teaches engineering classes to freshmen in the building directly behind Norris Hall, the building where the second shooting took place, said having the church community to fall back on during this time has been extremely helpful to him.

Garrett and his fiancée have only been members of the St. Mary's parish since Easter Sunday, he said. Fighting back tears, Garrett said he has canceled his class for Wednesday to give students more time to deal with what happened yesterday.

"Students have the most important parts of their semester left, and they're going to be very distracted," Garrett said, "I think this is going to practically ruin the rest of the semester, or what's left of it. I don't think the campus community will ever be the same."

Contact reporter Kevin Rector at rectordbk@gmail.com.