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American Morning
The Investigation; The Guns; Treating The Wounded; Students Coping; Witness To Tragedy
Aired April 17, 2007 - 06:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JOHN ROBERTS, CNN ANCHOR: This morning, the faces, the lives lost in the deadliest shooting in U.S. history. New information coming in about the horror on the Virginia Tech campus, and in that classroom.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: All of a sudden I just hear these fires going off and like all these gunshots.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He just started shooting. He didn't say anything.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROBERTS: Now questions and outrage. Who is the shooter? Could he have been stopped? The search for answers and healing for a college community and a country on a special edition of AMERICAN MORNING.
And good morning. It's Tuesday, April 17th, live from Blacksburg, Virginia, on the campus of Virginia Tech, now a scene of a terrible tragedy and immense grief for the 26,000 students who go to this institution. I'm John Roberts.
KIRAN CHETRY, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Kiran Chetry. We're glad that you're with us on this AMERICAN MORNING. We have a lot of questions certainly today that remain to be answered about that shooting. Thirty-two people murdered, as well as the gunman killed yesterday. And there are still a lot of questions about his identity and also identifying some of the people who lost their lives in this unspeakable tragedy.
ROBERTS: But here's what people in this area and indeed across the country are waking up to this morning. The headlines in "The Roanoke Times" say it all, "Massacre on Campus." This is an venerable institution of higher education in this country. One of the top 100 colleges in the nation. And today, just, again, grief and tragedy. Student trying to cope with what happened here yesterday. A very, very difficult time and more to come throughout the day.
CHETRY: Yes. In fact, the campus is closed today. However -- classes are closed. However, there are going to be tons of students, as well as family members, coming in today asking questions, getting some grief counseling. And, of course, the national media here. Everywhere you look there are satellite trucks and, of course, live positions like this because we're here to try to tell this story a little more. Tell a little more about the victims as well.
And the names of those lost are starting to come in. Authorities are not yet releasing any official lists until families have been notified. Some families, though, are choosing to come forward and to talk about the death of their loved one.
Ryan Clark was a senior from Martinez, Georgia. He was a resident assistant at West AJ Hall. That's a coed dormitory where they believe all of this started and he may have confronted the gunmen at that dorm.
Also 20-year-old Ross Alameddine, a student, one of 30 people killed in Norris Hall, the engineering building. He's from Saugus, Massachusetts.
We also know that two professors are among the dead. G.V. Loganathan. He taught civil and environmental engineering. Originally from southern India.
And also Liviu Librescu. He was killed in that same building. He was 75 years old. A long-time 20-year engineering, science and mechanics professor here at V Tech. Also a holocaust survivor. And in the ultimate irony was killed on holocaust remembrance day yesterday. He emigrated to Israel from Romania before coming to the United States.
And here's what else we do know now. Police have identified the shooter but have not released the name. They're doing some ballistics tests. They're trying to connect the two crime scenes here, one at the dorm and one at the engineering building. And they're not yet ready to say that the same gunman is behind both.
Right now, there are four hospitals, as well, treating as many as 18 victims. Nine of them listed in critical condition still this morning. And as we said, there are no classes but the V Tech campus is open for students, faculty, as well as family members, to meet, to try to get some information, and to try to get some grief counseling if they need it. And I'm sure there will be a lot of people who do.
The university is also planning a news conference. That's taking place at 9:00 Eastern Time this morning. There will also be a remembrance, a ceremony taking place at 2:00 p.m. Eastern. CNN got word that President Bush may attend this ceremony. There's also a candle light vigil that's planned for tonight at 8:00 p.m.
ROBERTS: And, of course, we're going to be bringing you all of those events live as they happen. We hope to get word in the next few minutes as to whether or not President Bush will be here. Apparently it's a logistics problem. They want to make sure that his visit here would not be too disruptive of the events that are taking place.
We have extensive cover of the tragedy this morning. CNN's Jim Acosta is with the investigation, and questions for campus security. AMERICAN MORNING'S Greg Hunter on the weapons used and Virginia's gun laws. How easy is it to get a weapon in this state? And CNN medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen is at Montgomery Regional Hospital where some of the wounded are being treated.
Let's go first to Jim Acosta. He's at the campus command center.
And, Jim, we're learning more about the gunman this morning. What can you tell us?
JIM ACOSTA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, John, as Kiran mentioned, we still don't know the identity of this gunman. Officials last night did say that they think they know who this gunman is. That they may have identified this gunman. But at this point, they are not releasing his name.
Officials in Washington have told various newspapers across the country, there are various reports that this young man may have recently arrived from overseas. He has been described by students on the campus, we've heard this before, as a young Asian man. That he was dressed like a Boy Scout.
There is one student who said he was wearing a black leather jacket and a maroon cap. That he was walking through Norris Hall, where most of these killings occurred, looking very methodical, looking highly trained in the use of handguns. That he went into one classroom, emptied one of those handguns, reloaded and then started shooting again.
Investigators are still trying to determine whether two recent bomb threats on the campus, one just last Friday, may be connected. Whether or not those bomb threats are connected to this case, that's important because yesterday there was a caller to CNN. We've heard various reports about this, that the doors at Norris Hall were chained shut and that there may have been notes attached to those chains saying that the doors at Norris Hall were booby-trapped.
That, of course all, if connected, would raise the specter a bit, perhaps this gunman was using those bomb threats earlier in the month to test the security system here on campus. But again, all of that unconfirmed. And police, last night at the last press conference, not addressing that, not confirming that information, saying they don't know anything about it at this point.
Police say they also have a person of interest, person of interest in custody. That person is not being identified as a suspect. And police are stressing they have not arrested him but they want to know what he has to say about all of this.
And then the big unanswered question for lots of students on this campus, officials here on the university campus have addressed the question but not to the satisfaction of a lot of students here, and that is that big time gap between the two shootings. Students here, professors, and the parents of these students want to know why there was such a huge gap between the two shootings and why students were not really alerted beyond that e-mail we heard about yesterday as to why these students did not know more about what was happening on this campus, that potentially there was a gunman on the loose.
Kiran. CHETRY: Certainly a lot of questions and hopefully we'll get some more answers today. We do have -- thank you, Jim. We do have several interviews coming up. John Robert, in just a few moments, is actually going to be speaking to the campus president and will pose some of those questions.
Meantime, we did get to hear a lot of the stories that these students went through as they tried to escape, and in many instances they did. Erin Sheehan was one of those. She was in German class when the shooter barged into the room, she says. And in a CNN exclusive, she describes what she saw and heard.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ERIN SHEEHAN, MASSACRE WITNESS: He was, I would say, about a little bit under six feet tall, young-looking, Asian. Dressed sort of strangely, almost like a Boy Scout, with very short-sleeved, light tan shirt and sort of ammo vest with black over it.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What kind of weapon did he have?
SHEEHAN: I'd say a hand gun. It was not a large rifle at all. It was black and it was plastic. I don't know much about guns.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHETRY: And amazingly, Sheehan survived, she says, by playing dead. And among the questions looming largest, the guns. Where did this shooter get them and how did he get them? And for more on that, AMERICAN MORNING's Greg Hunter joins us now. He has more on that part of the story and more on the type of weapons that authorities at this point believe were used.
GREG HUNTER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We don't know exactly where he got the guns at this point, but they do believe that he used a .22 caliber weapon, which is kind of a strange weapon to use. It's a very light caliber weapon. A very small weapon. Still deadly.
And also he used a .9 millimeter. A .9 millimeter is popular to police forces around the country. A clip holds 15 rounds. It's pretty easy to operate. It's semi-automatic. So as fast as you can pull the trigger, is as fast as that gun will shoot. And, of course, the clips go in and out really easy. About 15 round pers clip.
CHETRY: I think many of us were struck by the fact that he could just do so much damage, kill and injury so many people. How much ammunition would he have had to have on him?
HUNTER: He must have had a couple boxes of ammunition. And the other thing too is that, that is my speculation, is that, you know, he used handguns. I was thinking when I heard this, oh, he must have used some type of assault rifle. But to injury more than 50 people, to kill and injury more than 50 people with two handguns, it's pretty incredible, pretty amazing, really and awful.
CHETRY: It sure is. And some of the students, witnesses, describe the pauses to reload and then the bang, bang, bang again, as you described, as fast as he could pull the trigger.
HUNTER: Yes.
CHETRY: How does Virginia rate when it comes to gun laws? How easy is it to purchase handguns in this state?
HUNTER: Well, according to the Brady (ph) people, it's pretty easy. It's second only to the state of Georgia. There are no license. There's no waiting, no license, no checks at gun shows. Also, somebody from out of state -- Kiran, I can go out today and buy a high-powered rifle just with my I.D. and some proof of address.
Now you compare that to New York City, for example. There is a license. You have to wait six months. And also, there are checks at gun shows. In places like New York City, very difficult to buy and get a license and get a handgun legally -- or any gun.
CHETRY: Yes, it's true. And as I understand it, they do do a background check of federal and state just to make sure that you don't have any criminal history.
HUNTER: Well, they do that here, too. It's a check.
CHETRY: Yes, I'm saying, in Virginia, but there is no waiting period, although questions remain as to whether or not that would have made a difference because, at least what we're hearing, is that it may have been Friday that the guns were purchased or at least one of them?
HUNTER: Well, that's right. We don't know exactly. They haven't released any of that just yet. But that's -- that's it. You could walk in today and walk out today with a handgun or a rifle. And in this case, he had handguns.
CHETRY: Wow. All right. Well, we'll hear more from you throughout the morning on this. Greg Hunter, thanks so much.
Nine people are still being treated, by the way, at Montgomery Regional Hospital. CNN's Elizabeth Cohen is at that hospital. It's a level three trauma center that's right here in Blacksburg.
And, Elizabeth, have we gotten any updates on the conditions or the extent of the injuries of those being treated?
ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, we have received some updates, Kiran.
Kiran, this hospital received more patients than any other. It's about three miles away from Virginia Tech. Inside of those nine patients you mentioned, three are critical, six are stable, one was dead on arrival yesterday morning. In addition, seven were discharged, bringing that number to 17 who were brought here originally. They did at least four surgeries.
Now some patients were too ill to be treated here. You mentioned it's a level three trauma center. Several patients were transferred to a level one trauma center, Roanoke Memorial Hospital. Now it would have been preferable to have transfer those patients via air flight. However, they were unable to do that. As you can see here, it is quite windy. They had to drive them. It's about a 45- minute drive from here to Roanoke. At that hospital, two were critical and one died yesterday.
Now in addition, patients were also taken to two area hospitals.
Kiran.
CHETRY: All right. And we'll probably get some updates throughout the morning, so we'll check in with you. Elizabeth, thanks so much.
John.
ROBERTS: With little more than three weeks left in this semester, students here at Virginia Tech should be thinking about final projects, term papers, exams, and, for some, graduation. Instead, they're confronted with tragedy.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ROBERTS, (voice over): We heard it again and again from every student we talked to. How could this beautiful campus, in this sleepy Virginia town, ever be the scene of the worst mass shooting in American history?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE, VIRGINIA TECH STUDENT: Very, very saddening. I was crying. I couldn't reach my family because they turned -- like the phones were off. Everything was off.
ROBERTS: Andrew Wong (ph) was walking past Norris Hall, just 10 yards away, when he heard the shots.
ANDREW WONG, VIRGINIA TECH STUDENT: And I was just in a state of shock. And I literally stood there for about 10 seconds not knowing what to do.
ROBERTS: So close. So much death. How are students coping?
WONG: It's just hard not to think about the fact that it could have been me. I could have been one of those 32 students who got shot. And it's not something I want to think about, but it's very hard to get out of my mind.
ROBERTS: Jamal Albarghouti took the now famous camera phone video of the shooting. He has dealt with the tragedy by keeping busy. Hours of live appearances on CNN, describing the scene.
JAMAL ALBARGHOUTI, I-REPORTER/VIRGINIA TECH STUDENT: I think if I just kept dealing with the news and the media and I did that, I will not have time to probably think about what happened or about whether I should have ran or stayed.
ROBERTS: Tom Woods is a senior here, and a family friend. He'll graduate next month and will carry with him the shock and grief of this day, perhaps forever.
TOM WOODS, VIRGINIA TECH SENIOR: It's a terrible way, a terrible way that this class will be remembered. And three weeks before the end of finals and graduation. It's just -- it's very unfortunate and it's just a horrible incident that will round out our college career.
ROBERTS: As one student put it, Virginia Tech is a community, even more of a community now. A network of friendships and support groups needed like never before.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ROBERTS: Now we should point out, too, that even though Norris Hall is predominantly an engineering building, there are different classes that go on in there. Both Tom Woods and Jamal Albarghouti have classes in Norris. Tom would have been there this morning. Jamal would have been there tomorrow. So if the shooting had moved by a day or two, either one of them could have been involved. That's how close it is with all these students here.
CHETRY: And I think for a lot of students, not only trying to grasp the scope of the tragedy and the loss of their fellow classmates, but also knowing it could have so easily been me. I could have been in that classroom that day.
ROBERTS: And, you know, when I talked to my son about it. Because Tom is actually my son's best friend. He's over at the University of Colorado, a half a nation away, and immediately the stomach sinks, the cell phone opens up and you start frantically calling your friends, trying to make sure that they're OK. Because even though this is a campus of 26,000 people, you just never know who it could happen to.
CHETRY: True. And it's every parents worse nightmare. We're going to continue to follow this. So we're taking a quick break right now.
Coming up, we're going to be talking with the president of Virginia Tech.
A little bit later, we're going to hear more about the service that's planned for today. So, please, keep watching.
This is a special edition of AMERICAN MORNING. We're live from Blacksburg, Virginia.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CHETRY: And welcome back to a special edition of AMERICAN MORNING. We are here today at the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, Virginia. And, boy, it certainly is the focus of the nation today, perhaps unwanted because of the scope of the tragedy. But so many of the students who saw or heard the shootings were able, thankfully, to get out safely. We're going to listen to some of their firsthand accounts.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I saw a policeman taking off his gun and started looking at -- started looking for a target to shoot. I knew that this isn't another bomb threat.
ERIN SHEEHAN, MASSACRE WITNESS: He just stepped within five feet of the door and just started firing. He seemed very thorough about it. Getting almost everyone down or -- I pretended to be dead.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It was like a continuous gunfire going off. Like every like second or so there would be another shot. And there was approximately probably about 50 shots total.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We heard five shots on campus. And we could hear the emergency speaker system. So we all got down underneath the desks and moved away from the windows.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: People came pouring out the door with hands up and they were screaming and stuff like that. And I guess two kids had jumped out of the windows.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I heard shots fired and I saw everyone running across the drill field. So I then immediately started running towards my dorm so that I could get into a safe environment.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's just something that no one will ever get over. I mean, the people who died, yes, they've finished their pain, but the pain for everybody else will go on forever.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHETRY: And that is a sentiment echoed by many of the students here who were looking forward to graduation. For many, only three weeks away, and instead are dealing with an unimaginable tragedy. A lot of questions remain this morning as well. We're going to explore those deeper when we come right back. We're going to take a quick break right now.
But when we return, a lot of people are asking why that two-hour gap between when shots rang out at that dormitory and when campus officials notified students about a possible shooting. So we're going to look into that.
AMERICAN MORNING will be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I see the S.W.A.T. team swarm around Norris and I had no idea what was going on. And all of a sudden I just hear these shoots -- like these fires going off and like all these gunshots. And like everyone just started screaming "run." And everyone ran across the drill field.
(END VIDEO CLIP) CHETRY: Welcome back to a special edition of AMERICAN MORNING. We're here at the Virginia Tech campus this morning. It's almost 24 hours since the first shots rang out at a dormitory here at the campus, and yet there are still so many unanswered questions. We do know that the number of people killed is at 32, and then the gunman.
They know the identity of the gunman, apparently, yet police are not releasing it at this time. And, as well, we are learning that they are questioning another person. They're just describing as a "person of interest," not calling that person a suspect. And how that individual might be related to this massacre is still another big, unanswered question this morning.
But as authorities and people here on campus try to piece together what went wrong yesterday, they got more than 100 different i-Reports from the scene, including the student who was able to record shots outside of Norris Hall using his cell phone camera. That came in to CNN. And that video from the student's cell phone has received almost 2 million hits on our website. CNN's Jacki Schechner is following that part of the story. She is live in Washington this morning.
Jackie, it really is unbelievable when we see how many of these reports, these i-Reports came in from people who were experiencing some part of this tragedy yesterday.
JACKI SCHECHNER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Kiran.
When an incident like this takes place, what we do is go out to the Internet and scour for pieces of information that might turn up. But this is really the first time I can remember where we have received such an extraordinary outpouring of information to us here at CNN. People wanting to share their experiences and show us some photographs of what happened as the day unfolded.
Want you to take a look at this here from Drew Claire (ph). He's a 19-year-old on campus. He's a freshman who lives in Miles Hall. He says the RA's came by and told everyone to say in their rooms. Those are the resident advisers. He looked out the window, saw law enforcement everywhere.
We've got more photos in from Landen Mills (ph), who's a 20-year- old sophomore. Took these photographs from his dorm room window around 11:30 in the morning. There was a police blockade. They were crouched behind their cars shouting at students, again, stay in your room, shut the windows.
Mark Ruse (ph), a senior in chemical engineering, took this photo from his window, showing the emergency vehicles from the sheriff's office heading towards Norris Hall. Mark lives two buildings away.
CHETRY: Interrupt you right now.
SCHECHNER: Says he was walking out of class. Says he didn't realize how bad it was until he saw the four ambulances down the drill field. CHETRY: And, Jacki . . .
SCHECHNER: And another, Robert Freed (ph), says that he saw the 20-year old junior driving to campus, wanted to see what was going on.
Kiran.
CHETRY: Jacki, we're going to need to break in. Thanks, Jacki. Sorry to cut you short there, but we have to go now to John Roberts, who has an interview with the campus president.
John.
ROBERTS: Thanks, Kiran.
Of course, this campus is dealing with not only an unprecedented tragedy, but also questions as to whether or not more could have been done to mitigate the damage. Charles Steger is the dean of Virginia Tech. He's been dean since . . .
CHARLES STEGER, PRESIDENT, VIRGINIA TECH: Well, the president.
ROBERTS: President, I'm sorry, of Virginia Tech. Been president since the year 2000.
Do you have any more information, President Steger, about the shooter?
STEGER: Yes. We do know he was an Asian -- I'm talking about the second mass event -- an Asian male who was a resident in one of our dormitories. He was one of our students.
ROBERTS: Right. Now when you say the second mass event, are you separating that away from the first event? Could there potentially be two shooters?
STEGER: There could be. We don't know. The investigation is still unfolding. But we had one shooting early in the morning that initially, and we don't know the answer to this, appeared to be a domestic fight, perhaps, a murder/suicide. It was characterized by our security people as being contained to that dorm room. As we were working through the -- what we were going to do to deal with that, the message came on over the radio that another shooting across campus was taking place. And that's when the large number of people were killed.
ROBERTS: Do you believe that there could be a second shooter still at large here?
STEGER: We don't think so.
ROBERTS: Right.
One of the big points of controversy here, and this comes from every student at Virginia Tech that I have talked to is, why was there a two hour and 10 minute lag between the time that there was the shooting at West AJ at 7:15 and the time that the e-mail went out at 9:26 notifying students that something had happened?
STEGER: Well, first of all, when the event happened at AJ, the dormitory was immediately closed down. It was surrounded by security guards. The streets were cordoned off and the students in the building were notified of what was going on.
We also had to find witnesses because we didn't know what had happened. The individuals who were wounded, or at the time one was dead, we think -- I'm not sure about that -- were sent to the hospital and was based on the interrogation of the witnesses that we think there was another person involved. And so we wanted to be sure we could gather as much accurate information before taking steps.
But, it was -- the situation was characterized as being confined to that dormitory room. We thought we had it under control. And I don't think anyone could have predicted that another event was going to take place two hours later.
ROBERTS: You know, I've reviewed the crime stat, at least for the last three years here at Virginia Tech. You've had no murders on campus.
STEGER: Right. It's a very -- yes.
ROBERTS: Wouldn't an incident like this have been treated in such a way that you would have sent an alarm out immediately, at least to warn students that something had happened?
STEGER: Well, we warn the students that were, we thought, immediately impacted. You have to appreciate that of the 26,000 students here, only 9,000 are on campus. So at that time of the morning, you've got about 15,000 people in transit, 7,000 employees. And on any given day, 2,000, 3,000 visitors. So the question is, you have to decide what it is you're going to do with them. We felt that in the -- confining them to the classroom was how to keep them safest.
ROBERTS: President Steger, we've heard from at least a of couple of students who say the Virginia Tech police department blew it here. Is that fair?
STEGER: I don't think that's fair at all. I think they have worked very professionally and handled this as skillfully as anybody might be able to do it.
ROBERTS: Is President Bush coming today for this ceremony this afternoon?
STEGER: It's my understanding that's under consideration.
ROBERTS: All right. Would like to see him here? Would his presence be disruptive? That's a concern of the White House. They don't want to bring the president here because you've already got to much on your plate.
STEGER: We certainly would be happy to have the president if he chooses to come. ROBERTS: And what sort of services are you offering for students here now?
STEGER: Well, we have a whole series of counseling centers open. The local clergy have volunteered and we will be bringing online other types of specialized services. As you know, this is very traumatic for the campus. You're going to have to go through the stages of mourning and different types of support structures are required as do you that. But we will spare no effort in working with our student body to deal with this.
ROBERTS: President Steger, thanks very much for your time.
STEGER: Thank you, John.
ROBERTS: Appreciate it.
STEGER: OK.
ROBERTS: We'll have more of AMERICAN MORNING live from Virginia Tech when we return. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ROBERTS: And good morning. Welcome back. It's Tuesday, April the 17th.
From the campus of Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, I'm John Roberts, along with Kiran Chetry.
Good morning to you, Kiran.
CHETRY: Good morning to you.
You just finished speaking to the campus president, and you asked him a lot of questions about the timing and about whether or not they made the right call to not notify the entire campus that a shooting had indeed taken place at one of the dormitories.
ROBERTS: Right. And this is something that college students have been talking to us about for the last 24 hours, to say why did it take two hours and 10 minutes between the time of the first shooting over at West AJ Hall and the time that a notification went out?
The president of the university, Charles Steger, told me -- he said that they thought it was a domestic situation, they were talking to somebody who they believed was a person of interest in the case. They thought they had it contained, he said.
At no time did anyone think that another shooting was about to take place anywhere else on campus. But, you know, I asked him the question. I said, "Well, you haven't had a murder here in at least three years, and probably longer. Shouldn't a situation like that warrant some sort of notification?"
He said, "We notified people who were in the immediate area. We didn't think that it required a broader notification."
He also did confirm to us that the shooter, who has been identified by police but not publicly identified, is an Asian male. So we hopefully will learn a little bit more about that as time goes on this morning.
CHETRY: Yes. And the other question that I have is about the notification process. It's an e-mail. So, if you didn't log on to your computer in the morning and you just made your way to the campus, I mean, was e-mail the only way to let anybody know that there had been an incident?
ROBERTS: We had heard from some of the students that they were broadcasting over loud speakers the lockdown, but that lockdown came after the second shooting. It wasn't until about 10:16 in the morning.
So, as best as we can ascertain, the only notification that went out at 9:26 was this e-mail. And, of course, we as journalists carry those little Blackberrys with us everywhere. They are ubiquitous.
They're buzzing on our hips all the time. They are interrupting our dinners. People say, "Would you put those things away?" But students don't carry those, by and large.
Maybe a few do, they also get text messages on their cell phones, but they usually have to go through process of logging on to their e- mail to get notifications like that. So, perhaps for the future, you know, not only this campus, but other colleges across the country may want to figure out some sort of immediate way of notifying all of their students so that they don't have to take that active step of logging on to e-mail to find out what is going on.
CHETRY: There's a lot of talk about the possibility of sirens and whether that would have made a difference. And I'm sure a lot of this is going to be chewed over, mulled over and discussed, because...
(CROSSTALK)
ROBERTS: But as we heard, though, those sirens would not have gone off because they didn't think that there was an immediate problem.
CHETRY: Right.
Well, there are still a lot of unanswered questions, as John and I are talking about this morning. One is, could the gunman's murderous rampage have been prevented if authorities had reacted differently to that initial shooting about 7:15 in the morning yesterday in a dorm across campus? Let's take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CHETRY (voice over): University police received a 911 call about a shooting at West Ambler Johnston Hall. Police arrived at the coed dorm and found two students shot dead. CHIEF WENDELL FLINCHUM, VIRGINIA TECH POLICE: We secured the dormitory in which the first incident happened. And again, we acted on the best information we had at the time. A lockdown policy was mentioned.
CHETRY: But police determined that the shooting was an isolated incident and decided not to enforce a campus-wide lockdown.
FLINCHUM: We had information from witnesses and the evidence at the scene that led us to believe the shooter was no longer in the building and more than likely off campus.
CHETRY: More than two hours after the first shooting, an e-mail was finally sent to students informing them of the dormitory killings and warning them to be cautious.
Police say while they questioned a person of interest in the first shooting, gunfire erupted on the other side of campus. At Norris Hall, a building filled with classrooms and students, one of the classes the shooter targeted was Erin Sheehan.
ERIN SHEEHAN, VIRGINIA TECH STUDENT: He just stepped within five feet of the door and just started firing. He seemed very thorough about it, getting almost everyone down. I pretended to be dead, just on the ground.
CHETRY: Sheehan, like many others, says she was unaware of the campus warning.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm pretty outraged that someone died in a shooting in a dorm at 7:00 in the morning and the first e-mail about it, no mention of locking down campus.
CHETRY: But Virginia Tech president Charles Steger says they were working with the information they had at the time.
CHARLES STEGER, VIRGINIA TECH PRESIDENT: We have to make the decision based on the information we know at the time. And I think we did it as well as we could.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHETRY: So just a lot of questions about what could have been. And I think that a lot of need this morning and in the days and weeks and months to come for comfort and to try to put this into context for those who lived through it.
And one person who is helping in that effort is Pastor Jim Pace of the New Life Christian Fellowship. It's a church that caters largely to students here.
Thanks for being with us this morning.
PASTOR JIM PACE, NEW LIFE CHRISTIAN FELLOWSHIP: Sure, Kiran.
CHETRY: After the news broke yesterday of this horrific shooting, did people come to you?
PACE: They did. It took a while. I mean, we were all staring at CNN to watch something that was happening a half-mile away from us. It was just unfolding with us, just like with everybody else in the country.
CHETRY: So even though you were here on campus, you were very isolated when it came to getting information?
PACE: Absolutely. It was changing so quickly. And it was just -- it was just unfolding in front of us. And so we were just waiting to see fully what happened.
CHETRY: And then after it became apparent that there was 32 people -- and I know those numbers changed throughout the day -- killed, shot, murdered, how did you comfort those who were coming to the church?
PACE: I don't know how you really comfort people right now through this. I mean, we just were there with them. We tried to listen to them. I mean, we've got people that can't find their friends. And it's a -- it's still a very, very tough thing for a lot of people.
CHETRY: What were they telling you?
PACE: Well, they were telling me all kinds of things. They are confused as to why this happened. They are scared because they don't know how bad it's going to be before everything kind of sifts out. They're just wondering what to do now.
CHETRY: And how do you put that into a spiritual context? How do you explain to the students and to family members how good people were killed for what is just a completely senseless act?
PACE: Well, I mean, in my faith, in my understanding of the bible, this is what it says. I mean, evil is not a theoretical construct. It's real. And evil came to Blacksburg yesterday and sat down for a while with us. And this is what we get.
I mean, it's -- you know, the hope that I have is that people can actually have their hearts changed through following Jesus. And that's what -- that's what we tell people. And that's what we need right now, is to have people with changed hearts.
CHETRY: You're going to have a lot on your shoulders in the days, weeks and months to come as many people will seek comfort at your church.
Jim -- Pastor Jim, thanks so much for being with us.
PACE: You're welcome, Kiran.
CHETRY: Well, we are going to take a quick break.
Coming up next, what can be learned from the I-report video? Many people were able to take pictures either on their camera phones or video from their camera phones. Chris Lawrence is going to sit down with a S.W.A.T. team trainer to find out what police are going to be looking for as they check out all of that video.
That's next on AMERICAN MORNING. We're live from the campus at Virginia Tech.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ROBERTS: We're joined right now by another student here at Virginia Tech, but he is also the managing editor of "The Collegiate Times," which is the school newspaper. Robert Bowman is his name.
And thanks very much for joining us.
Let's take a look first of all, Robert. This is the headline of the day here, "The Collegiate Times," "The deadliest shooting spree in U.S. history devastates the Virginia Tech community." "Heartache" is the headline of the day.
Is that really the predominant emotion today at Virginia Tech?
ROBERT BOWMAN, MANAGING EDITOR, "COLLEGIATE TIMES": Definitely. People are definitely confused and feeling just unsafe, insecure, I guess wondering, looking for answers, for sure.
ROBERTS: Your newspaper found out about the shooting before the e-mail alert went out. What time did you find out about it? How did you find out about it?
BOWMAN: I personally found out about it at around 8:45. And then later, we broke the story online on our Web site. And around 8:00 -- or 9:00 rather.
ROBERTS: So, 9:00, that would have been 26 minutes before the first e-mail went out.
BOWMAN: Just about, yes.
ROBERTS: So, what are the question that you, your newspaper, your reporters are asking of officials here at Virginia Tech today?
BOWMAN: We're really wondering why the campus wasn't locked down right -- right away after that Ambler Johnston. They said that they had reason to believe that the gunman had left campus, left the state, but we are still not sure why we were told to go to classes and such. So we're looking for answers, definitely.
ROBERTS: President Steger told me just a few minutes ago that they thought the area had been locked down, and in fact he has called the person who is believed to be responsible for the shooting at Norris, which is -- the person he described as an Asian student, as the second shooter, but he won't say he believes there was a first shooter or that there's somebody still at large.
BOWMAN: That's definitely something we are looking into. Hopefully there's a press conference in about an hour or two hours, and hopefully we'll get a lot more answers there.
ROBERTS: Do you believe that lives could have been saved had that notification gone out earlier?
BOWMAN: I can't say for sure, but personally, I think that it wouldn't have hurt.
ROBERTS: You're a student here, as well as the managing editor. Let me ask you as a student, would you have liked to have seen -- should that e-mail have gone out earlier?
BOWMAN: I guess I would like to see it, but I can't say for sure that it would have been effective. I guess hindsight is always 20/20 in cases like this.
ROBERTS: All right. Well, Robert Bowman, thanks very much for joining us. Really appreciate it. Good work that you are doing. Good work breaking that story.
BOWMAN: All right.
ROBERTS: All right. Take care. Thank you very much.
Cell phone video from a student could be a key piece of evidence for investigators. AMERICAN MORNING'S Chris Lawrence sat down with a S.W.A.T. team trainer and ballistics analyst who examined the tape.
Chris, what did you find when you looked at that?
CHRIS LAWRENCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, John, some of the investigators will be looking at that tape to determine exactly how many shots were fired and from which weapon. But if you look closely, there's a lot more to be learned from that tape.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
LAWRENCE (voice over): To a trained eye, this exclusive video contains clues about what happened inside.
AARON COHEN, FMR. ISRAELI COUNTERTERRORISM EXPERT: Those shots are coming from the same weapon. Those are consistent. One, two, three, four, five, six shots, seven shots.
LAWRENCE: Aaron Cohen is a former Israeli counterterroism expert who trains S.W.A.T. teams to rapidly respond inside schools.
COHEN: This is the real deal. This is a high capacity magazine.
LAWRENCE (on camera): If it is one shooter, how did he walk into a second building armed?
COHEN: Oh, he just marched right in there.
What we have here -- if you guys can go ahead and freeze this for one second -- what we've got here is we've got an urban environment. This is very similar to Iraq, actually. And the distances and the proximity in this type of urban environment is really conducive for a handgun.
LAWRENCE (voice over): Which tells Cohen the shooter could have blended in to campus and didn't need to be an expert shot.
COHEN: And the types of weapons that you can deploy in order to create maximum effectiveness really is nothing more than being this far away from somebody.
LAWRENCE: Just based on the limited video he has seen, Cohen would have gone in very aggressively.
COHEN: You've got to get as many guns in that building as possible.
LAWRENCE: We freeze the video to examine officers preparing to bust in.
COHEN: It appears to be that they are deploying with long rifles, which law enforcement has started keeping in their cars as a result of Columbine. The problem here and the problem I have with this scenario is that I don't see movement. I need to see guys gone. I need to see them sprinting towards the threat.
LAWRENCE: Police say two doors of the building were chained from the inside. And by the officers got to the second floor, the shooting was over.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
LAWRENCE: And Cohen says that police departments all over the country will be watching that video for years to come. He knows that what he is preaching is almost directly opposite of what a lot of law enforcement agencies do, which is to fall back and secure the perimeter. But he thinks in the months and years to come, a lot of these agencies are going to be adopting some of the more aggressive military techniques that the troops are learning in Iraq right now -- John.
ROBERTS: Chris, thanks very much.
You know, I talked with Jamal Albarghouti, who is the guy who took that report yesterday that got sent in to us over our I-Report system. And I asked him -- I said, "Were you frightened when you were taking that video?" And he said he sort of lost himself in the moment. And that's very much what happens with a lot of people.
But an extreme amount of danger there, Chris, obviously when you look that videotape.
LAWRENCE: Oh, very much so. In fact, when I talked to Aaron, I said, "What's your first reaction to this?" And he said, "My first reaction is to hide. That's anyone. That's the body's first reaction. But my professional training in Israel tells me that there needed to be guns going in every window."
That is how they teach in Israel, a massive deployment on the suspect, to have guns going in and having officers trained to shoot in a crowd very accurately.
ROBERTS: All right. And according to the timeline that we've got, too, Chris, the officers made it to the second floor just as the gunman put the gun to himself and shot himself dead.
If they had gotten there a few minutes earlier, you have to wonder, could the whole thing have been different?
Chris Lawrence, thanks very much.
And if you have an I-Report, send your photos, your video, your comments to ireport@cnn.com. But, as always, stay safe while you're doing it. As we said, Jamal got lost in the moment there. Make sure if you're going to be trying to report on something, that you stay safe above all.
Doctors in Virginia say most of the victims taken to the hospitals after the massacre were shot two, three, even more times. Coming up, we will talk to a doctor who treated some of those students and get an update on their conditions.
Stay us with on AMERICAN MORNING, live from Virginia Tech.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CHETRY: And again, thank you for joining us on this special edition of AMERICAN MORNING. We are live here this morning at the campus of Virginia Tech, following the aftermath of the horrific, the worst massacre shooting in United States history.
And joining me to talk more about the valiant effort by many to try to save the lives of those who were injured and brought into area hospitals is Dr. Joseph Cacioppo.
Sorry about that.
You helped to treat a lot of the wounded in the emergency room. You weren't on shift that day, but you called in to see if they needed help.
What did you find when you got there?
DR. JOSEPH CACIOPPO, MONTGOMERY REGIONAL HOSPITAL: Well, I got there about 11:00, and the most critical patients had already been seen, stabilized, and were preparing to either go to surgery or be transferred to Roanoke. We had -- actually, I had been involved in several mass casualty situations, nothing as horrific as this one, and it was well in hand.
The crew there on staff had just taken everything in hand. We had surgeons from all over New River Valley that had come up to work. We had nursing staff from all over the area.
CHETRY: So a lot of people answered that call.
CACIOPPO: Absolutely. CHETRY: The question is, what were the injuries like?
CACIOPPO: The injuries were just amazing. This man was brutal.
There wasn't a -- there wasn't a shooting victim that didn't have less than three bullet wounds in them. Even, again, the less serious injuries, we saw one patient that had a bullet wound to the wrist, one to the elbow and one to the thigh. We had another one with a bullet wound to the abdomen, one to the chest and one to the head.
CHETRY: So it was just where people were shot on their bodies that determined whether or not they survived it, because this man shot so many people multiple times.
CACIOPPO: That's correct. That's correct.
CHETRY: How do you even begin to -- you watched a patient die in front of you. I mean, how do you deal with that, maintain professionalism, and keep going to try to save more lives?
CACIOPPO: You know, it's -- I can't explain it to you. There's no -- we just sort of become detached from the emotionalism of the situation and just proceed on. I think it's afterwards, in the aftermath, when we all have time to sit back and reflect, is when it hits us. And there were a lot of tears shed.
CHETRY: And today?
CACIOPPO: Today as well. We are having -- even at the medical school, we are opening up the school for any of the family members and so forth to come and get away from the major scene, the students to get away from the major scene.
You know, even the students that weren't injured, physically injured, have been emotionally injured in this thing.
CHETRY: Of course.
CACIOPPO: There are students that can't go back to Ambler Johnston Hall and live anymore. There are students that can't come back to the campus anymore.
CHETRY: Understandable.
CACIOPPO: Yes.
CHETRY: At least if there is any comfort to be taken, it's in the lives that you were able to save. So thanks for that, and to the brave team of people at all of the hospitals here.
Dr. Joseph Cacioppo, thanks so much for joining us.
CACIOPPO: Thank you.
CHETRY: And we are once again going to continue our coverage here. We are back with some late details that are just into us here at AMERICAN MORNING.
Also, the president of Virginia Tech is confirming to us that the shooter was a student here, a resident, in fact, of one of the dormitories.
Also, the names and faces of the victims are starting to come in as well. We're going to update you when we come back on this special edition of AMERICAN MORNING.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ROBERTS (voice over): This morning, stories revealed inside the deadliest shooting in U.S. history. New information about the horror at Virginia Tech. What happened inside that classroom?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: All of a sudden, I hear these fires going off and, like, all these gunshots.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He just started shooting, didn't say anything.
ROBERTS: Now outrage and tough questions for the university president.
STEGER: We thought we had it under control.
ROBERTS: Who is the shooter? Why did he do it? The search for answers and healing for a college community and a country on a special edition of AMERICAN MORNING.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHETRY: And good morning. It is Tuesday, April 17th. We are live here at Blacksburg, Virginia, and the campus of Virginia Tech.
I'm Kiran Chetry.
ROBERTS: And I'm John Roberts.
Good morning and thank you very much for joining us.
We also want to welcome in viewers around the world who are watching us on CNN International right now. And some breaking news to tell you about.
We have a little bit better idea who was responsible for the shooting, the worst shooting in America which took place yesterday, leaving 32 people, students and professors at Virginia Tech, dead.
CHETRY: That's right. And we found out a confirmation coming just a few moments ago from the campus president here about -- a little bit more about who the shooter was. He has been identified as a student of this campus, and also someone who lived in one of the campus dormitories. TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.voxant.com
