Gunman massacres 32 at two Virginia Tech - Thompson blames it on videogames.

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cnn.com

* Gunman massacres 32 at two Virginia Tech sites

* Survivor: He fired at professor first, then students

* Some students jumped from windows to escape

* Other students locked themselves in teacher's office

* It is the deadliest shooting rampage in U.S. history

This is pretty brutal :

BLACKSBURG, Virginia (CNN) -- A gunman who killed at least 30 people at one of two shootings on the campus of Virginia Tech Monday was dressed "almost like a Boy Scout," said a student who survived by pretending to lie dead on a classroom floor.

"He just stepped within five feet of the door and just started firing," said Erin Sheehan who was in one of the Norris Hall classrooms where the second shooting incident took place.

Sheehan described the gunman -- who later shot and killed himself according to police -- as a young man wearing a short-sleeved tan shirt and black ammunition vest.

"He seemed very thorough about it -- getting almost everyone down -- I pretended to be dead," she said. (Student survives by playing dead Video)

"He was very silent," said Sheehan, one of only four students in her 25-student German class who were not shot.

The gunman left for about 30 seconds, but returned because "I guess he heard us still talking."

"We forced ourselves against the door so he couldn't come in again, because the door would not lock," Sheehan said.

The man tried three more times to force his way in then began firing through the door, she said.

Student Tiffany Otey was taking a test inside Norris Hall when the shooting began. She and about 20 other people took refuge behind a locked door in a teacher's office.

Police officers with bulletproof vests and machine guns were in the area.(Watch a student's recording of police responding to loud bangs Video)

"They were telling us to put our hands above our head and if we didn't cooperate and put our hands above our heads they would shoot," Otey said. "I guess they were afraid, like us -- like the shooter was going to be among one of us." (Watch students react to shooting Video)

Some students leaped from windows to escape.

"We heard some loud banging, and we weren't sure if it was construction or not. We heard people screaming, so everybody in the class huddled in the back," said Josh Wargo, a student who was in Norris Hall. "We were going to go out the front door, and someone opened the door, and it sound like the shots were being fired down the hallway. We all jumped out of the window."

The shooter attacked more than one classroom at Norris Hall, according to police and the death total there makes it the deadliest shooting in U.S. history.

"It was kind of scary," said Matt Waldron. "These two kids I guess had panicked and jumped out of the top-story window and the one kid broke his ankle and the other girl was not in good shape just lying on the ground."

Laura Lisbeth, a 19-year-old sophomore, told CNN.com on Monday evening that while she was at Holtzman Alumni Center she saw one of her friends who had been shot in the arm.

Lisbeth said she was shaken by the day's events.

"I'm terrified," she said. "It's gonna be so hard to walk back into class and trust that nothing bad will happen."

Madison Van Duyne said she and her classmates in a media writing class were on "lockdown" in their classroom. They were huddled in the middle of the classroom, writing stories about the shootings and posting them online.

Two hours between incidents

Two people were killed in a separate incident at a dormitory on the campus about two hours earlier, around 7:15 a.m. University police Chief Wendell Flinchum said police were still investigating whether the two incidents are related.

At a news conference Monday afternoon, Flinchum did not rule out a separate shooter for the dormitory incident. (Watch the police chief explain where bodies were found Video)

One dormitory victim identified

Courtney Dalton, an 18-year-old student who worked at West End Dining Hall, said her friend Ryan Clark was one of the two dormitory victims.

She said Clark, a resident assistant at West Johnston Ambler Hall, had once worked at the cafeteria serving pizza.

"He was a happy person; this is really sad," she said, sobbing.

"All I can do is pray for his family now," she told CNN.com.

'Person of interest'

At the time of the later shootings at Norris Hall, police were investigating a "person of interest" in the dormitory shootings, Flinchum said. But the man -- a non-student who knew one of the victims -- had not been arrested, and it is unclear if he has any link to the other gunman, he said.

Flinchum said at a Monday night news conference that they had a preliminary identification of the shooter at Norris Hall but were not releasing it.

A law enforcement source close to the investigation told CNN a 22-caliber handgun and a 9 mm handgun were recovered at the scene.

University President Charles Steger told reporters Monday night that police found the front doors of Norris chained shut and that by the time they got to the second floor, the gunfire stopped. (Watch gunfire on the campus Video)

Officials thought first incident was isolated

Asked why the campus, which has more than 26,000 students, was not shut down after the first shooting, Flinchum responded that police determined "it was an isolated event to that building and the decision was made not to cancel classes at that time." (Officials thought shooter had fled)

Sharon Honaker with Carilion New River Medical Center in Christiansburg said one of the four gunshot victims being treated there was in critical condition.

Scott Hill, a spokesman for Montgomery Regional Hospital in Blacksburg, said 17 wounded students were taken there.

West Ambler Johnston Hall is a dormitory that houses 895 students and is located near the drill field and stadium. (Campus map)

Amie Steele, editor-in-chief of the campus newspaper, said one of her reporters at the dormitory where the first shootings occured reported "mass chaos."

The reporter said there were "lots of students running around, going crazy, and the police officers were trying to settle everyone down and keep everything under control," according to Steele. (Watch police, ambulances hustle to the scene Video)

The university is updating students through e-mails, and an Internet webcam is broadcasting live pictures of the campus.

Last August, the first day of class was cut short by a manhunt for an escaped prisoner accused of killing a Blacksburg hospital security guard and a sheriff's deputy.

After Monday's shootings, students were instructed to stay indoors and away from windows, according to a university statement. (Watch a student describe living through a "college Columbine" Video)

The university has scheduled a convocation for 2 p.m. ET Tuesday. Classes also have been canceled Tuesday. In Washington, the House and Senate observed moments of silence for the victims and President Bush said the nation was "shocked and saddened" by news of the tragedy.

"Today, our nation grieves with those who have lost loved ones," he said. "We hold the victims in our hearts, we lift them up in our prayers and we ask a loving God to comfort those who are suffering today."

Before Monday, the deadliest mass shooting occurred in 1991, when George Hennard drove a pickup truck into a Killeen, Texas, cafeteria and fatally shot 23 people, before shooting and killing himself.

The deadliest school shootings came in 1966 and 1999. In the former, Charles Joseph Whitman, a 25-year-old ex-Marine, killed 13 people on the University of Texas campus. He was killed by police.

In 1999, 17-year-old Dylan Klebold and 18-year-old Eric Harris -- armed with guns and pipe bombs -- killed 12 students and a teacher before killing themselves at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado.

CNN's Ashley Fantz and Jeanne Meserve contributed to this report.

Breaking: IDIOT Thompson Blames Va Shooting on Games - Kotaku

Yep, despite the fact that he's a known liar, infamous for threatening fellow attorneys and judges and is on the cusp of (one would hope) losing his license to practice law in Florida, Jack Thompson managed to weasel his way onto Fox News to spew his own particular brand of hate and lies.

That's right, Thompson is trying to link the worst shooting in U.S. history, the one that occurred earlier today at Virginia Tech, to video games.

What I love about this is that just about everything he says on live television is blatantly not true, like blaming video games on the Red Lake High School shooting.

It saddens me that filth like Jack can get on national television to gloat and revel in the deaths of so many and try to put it off as education.

This had better not delay GTA4 in any way! But if it the killer has anything to do with videogames (oh please let it be Mario this time!), then its sad.
 
Fox News Live was calling him a "School Shooting Specialist"

OMFG!! :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

It's the end of the world and we didn't even know it :rofl:

It's just sad tht Fox news would let this !@$!@ appear ..Guess they would do anything to increase their viewership ratings..

Wht else is next?? [Fu]Jack[ass] Thompson contacts the victims parents and asks them to join with him in his fight against video games.
This was the same guy who said tht gamers are the ones who shoot ppl in the head..so was he at Virginia Tech counting headshots??

YouTube - Jack Thompson parody

^This is more like it.Anyways waiting for someone to upload the fox news on tht A**hole's interview,here's one where he gets his mouth shut after engaging in something of a debate

YouTube - Jack Thompson Interviewed On AOTS
 
Yeah, its really sad for both Fox and Thompson. Fox actually let this moron on air, and Thompson for merely using the incident to propel his ambitions.

There used to be massacres even before TV's were invented.
 
When will the "School Shooting Specialist" realize the importance of gun control?? Why the hell can't these morons blame the whole thing on al-qaeda and go after them instead of my fav. pass time......video games???

Also this should be posted in the general talk section.Just becoz one moron blamed it on video games doesn't mean that this news falls under the gam section.
 
Have you ever watched the Daily Show? That should give you a fair idea about the journalistic standards of 'Faux News'
 
hmm well no point blaming video games... but Video games do influence crazy minds...

I was watching an interview of a school shooting convict on CNN...he was 16 when he committed the crime and now in jail....and the sad part was he said video games were one of his influences... :(
 
Finally,kotaku has done some research on Jack[ass] thompson's so called claims on video game violence..

Feature: Dissecting Jack's Lies - Kotaku

somebody bring the stakes,it's barbecue time.

EDIT:Forgot this too..

Washington Post Links Shooter to Counterstrike - Kotaku

Several Korean youths who knew Cho Seung Hui from his high school days said he was a fan of violent video games, particularly Counterstrike, a hugely popular online game published by Microsoft, in which players join terrorism or counterterrorism groups and try to shoot each other using all types of guns.

:P
 
unfortunately, i dont like to say this being a gamer myself, but games do affect the phyche of certain ppl...and n this was one of the extreme forms of one of such cases
 
No, other politicians need not even respond to Thompson's claim.

CALLER: What I really think is an issue is video violence, video gaming. I will guarantee you, I'll bet my last dollar in my pocket, that this shooter will be found to have been a compulsive video gamer, and when people are living that kind of lifestyle -- and college students do this a lot.

RUSH: (sigh) Let's say you're right. Not every video gamer goes out and murders 33 people on the college campus though. There's more to this than that. We can find all kinds of societal problems and ills, but the fact of the matter is that whatever you would look at as a bad influence -- video games as you mentioned -- it may desensitize people, but it doesn't turn everybody into mass murderers.

Word.
 
xXx said:
Seriously!!!!.....Mario told the gunman to kill people!!! hehehe

Heh! Jump on the victims heads and then collect their coins. Mario murder simulator!!

America as a country seriously need to look into their gun control.

And the fact that newsmen actually use a phrase like "School Shooting Specialist" makes me dispair for the human species.
 
America as a country seriously need to look into their gun control.

A lot of forums (with Americans on it) are loathing us Indians and Australians for picking on that point. The main point in defense is that :

1. Guns are for self defense

2. Even though India has one of the strictest Gun policies in the world, its murder rate not much less than that of the United States.

In other words, Guns don't kill people. People kill people. Gun is just another tool, which is a good substitute to sticks, knives, sledgehammers, a noose, or an open balcony.
 
yeah Its ppl who are killers dont blame Video games for it...its their mindset....No game inspires them to go on killing spree.....
 
If video games killed people then south korea and japan would be the most violent countries in the world with the highest murder rate.

You don't need video games to create(in the minds of people) the desire to kill others.People may develop the urge to kill others without ever playing a video game.There could be scores of reasons to kill others but unless you have the means(read guns) to execute it,it doesn't matter.If the killer didn't have access to guns, he would have used a knife or something to do the same but the casuality would have been much less.

BTW,i love guns and although i believe gun control would work to some extend,i am against it.
 
oh no.... not this debate again... I agree that gun control doesn't help (Canada, Switzerland, India) but I also think that talking heads like limbaugh and thompson need to shut up and stop "discussing" things which they refuse to understand.

By the way, limbaugh probably said that to piss on thompson. He does that.
 
Or better ppl with more sense, can stop watching limbaugh to know what to think.

Gun control is a dead horse, no party with any sense is going to alienate 5-10% of its electorate, when office can be won or lost in with less than 3%

The strange part is why does a kid that grew up less than 20 miles away want to commit such an act.

His final notes say he's upset with moral decay by more well-off kids at college.
 
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