Swanson was released from the Mental Hospital... his condition is stable, as long as he cooperates with his doctor's orders to not go near any ponds from now on.
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Gunman kills 32 in Virginia Tech rampage By SUE LINDSEY, Associated Press Writer Mon Apr 16, 7:40 PM ETBLACKSBURG, Va. - A gunman massacred 32 people at Virginia Tech in the deadliest shooting rampage in modern U.S. history Monday, cutting down his victims in two attacks two hours and a half-mile apart before the university could figure out what was going on and get the warning out to students. The bloodbath ended with the gunman committing suicide, bringing the death toll to 33 and stamping the campus in the picturesque Blue Ridge Mountains with tragedy, perhaps forever."I'm really at a loss for words to explain or understand the carnage that has visited our campus," Virginia Tech President Charles Steger said.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.Investigators offered no motive for the attack. The gunman's name was not immediately released, and it was not known if he was a student.Wielding two pistols, the gunman opened fire about 7:15 a.m. at West Ambler Johnston, a coed dormitory, then stormed Norris Hall, a classroom building on the other side of the 2,600-acre campus, chaining the doors behind him to keep anyone from escaping.Two people died in a dorm room, and 31 others were killed in Norris Hall, including the gunman, who put a bullet in his head. At least 26 people were hurt, some seriously.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 the chained and padlocked doors. SWAT team members 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.Trey Perkins, who was sitting in a German class in Norris Hall, told The Washington Post that the gunman barged into the room at about 9:50 a.m. and opened fire for about a minute and a half, squeezing off 30 shots in all.The gunman, Perkins said, first shot the professor in the head and then fired on the students. Perkins said the gunman was about 19 years old and had a "very serious but very calm look on his face.""Everyone hit the floor at that moment," said Perkins, 20, of Yorktown, Va., a sophomore studying mechanical engineering. "And the shots seemed like it lasted forever."Students bitterly complained that there were no public-address announcements on campus after the first shots. Many said the first word from the university was an e-mail more than two hours into the rampage — around the time the gunman struck again."I think the university has blood on their hands because of their lack of action after the first incident," said Billy Bason, 18, who lives on the seventh floor of the dorm."If you had apprehended a suspect, I could understand having classes even after two of your students have perished. But when you don't have a suspect in a college environment and to put the students in a situation where they're congregated in large numbers in open buildings, that's unacceptable to me."Steger defended the university's handling of the tragedy, 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 emphasized that the university closed off the dorm after the first attack and decided to rely on e-mail and other electronic means to notify members of the university, but 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 e-mail went out, the university began telephoning resident advisers in the dorms to notify them and sent people to knock on doors to spread the word. Students were warned to stay inside and away from the windows."We can only make decisions based on the information you had at the time. You don't have hours to reflect on it," Steger said. He called the massacre a tragedy of "monumental proportions." A law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigation was incomplete, said that the gunman had two pistols and multiple clips of ammunition. Some students and Laura Wedin, a student programs manager at Virginia Tech, said the first notification they got of the shootings came in an e-mail at 9:26 a.m., more than two hours after the first shooting. The e-mail 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. Everett Good, junior, said of the lack of warning: "Someone's head is definitely going to roll over that." Edmund Henneke, associate dean of engineering, said he was in the classroom building and he and colleagues had just read the e-mail advisory regarding the first shooting and were discussing it when he heard gunfire. He said moments later SWAT team members rushed them downstairs, but the doors were chained and padlocked from the inside. They left the building through a construction area that had not been locked.
Here is a controversial opinion:If some of the students under fire had been armed, this might have ended very differently. Maybe we need more firearms for law-abiding citizens.
Quote from: Callaway on April 16, 2007, 09:00:25 PMHere is a controversial opinion:If some of the students under fire had been armed, this might have ended very differently. Maybe we need more firearms for law-abiding citizens.Yeah, but I don't know if the average college student could be trusted with weapons.I know that a lot of kids that age end up getting into some pretty dumb situations, andmight well end up causing more deaths overall.
You'll never self-actualize the subconscious canopy of stardust with that attitude.
Gee, where did I hear that before?
ponds from now on.
