By staff and wire reports
BLACKSBURG
A gunman killed a police officer in a Virginia Tech parking lot today and was found dead nearby in a baffling attack that sent shudders through the campus nearly five years after it was the scene of the deadliest shooting rampage in modern U.S. history.
The shooting took place on the same day Virginia Tech officials were in Washington, fighting a government fine over their alleged mishandling of the 2007 bloodbath.
Before it became clear that the gunman in today's attack was dead, the school applied the lessons learned during the last tragedy, locking down the campus and using a high-tech alert system to warn students and faculty members to stay indoors.
Virginia Tech police officer Deriek Crouse, 39, of Christianburg, was killed after pulling a driver over in a traffic stop. The gunman — who was not involved in the traffic stop — walked into the parking lot and shot the officer, Sgt. Robert Carpentieri said. Police wouldn't talk about a motive.
A law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity confirmed the gunman was dead, but wouldn't say how.
It appeared the gunman died about a quarter-mile away from the traffic stop, in another school parking lot, where officials said a man was found dead with a gun nearby. While police at a news conference wouldn't confirm the second body was the gunman, Carpentieri said "you can kind of read between the lines."
Later tonight during a press conference with the governor, state police said the second person who was found dead was spotted with a weapon on the camera that was installed in the police officer's vehicle. They still didn't want to confirm the second person was the shooter until the investigation is completed.
The mayhem began around 12:30 p.m. when a Virginia Tech police officer made what university officials described as a routine traffic stop in the Cassell Coliseum parking lot and was shot to death in front of witnesses.
The shooter fled on foot in the direction of the Cage, a Tech parking lot farther down Washington Street, the university said at an afternoon press conference. A second body was found there, also killed by a gunshot. A gun was found near the body, Tech officials said.
The Virginia Tech Police Department released a statement Thursday evening saying that Crouse, who joined Tech's police force in October 2007, is survived by his wife, five children and step-children, his mother and brother. He was an Army veteran who had also worked for the New River Valley Regional Jail and the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office.
Virginia Tech said in a news release that funeral arrangements for the patrol officer will be announced at a later time.
The shooter, who was described as a white male wearing gray sweat pants, a gray hat with neon green brim, a maroon hoodie and backpack, was not identified by officials tonight.
School officials said shortly before 4:30 p.m. there was no longer an active threat and that normal activities could resume.
Investigators were interviewing the person who was pulled over. State police were investigating whether the officer had been specifically targeted.
Lockdown instituted
The officer's shooting prompted a lockdown that lasted for hours.
As police hunted for the killer, the school applied the lessons learned nearly five years ago, warning students and faculty members via email and text message to stay indoors. It was the first gunfire on campus since 33 people were killed in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.
The shooting today sent a shudder through campus, where students preparing for exams were suddenly told to hunker down. Heavily armed officers walked around campus as caravans of SWAT vehicles and other police cars with emergency lights flashing patrolled nearby.
"A lot of people, especially toward the beginning were scared," said Jared Brumfield, a 19-year-old freshman from Culpeper, Va., who was locked in the Squires Student Center since around 1:30 p.m. "A lot of people are loosening up now. I guess we're just waiting it out, waiting for it to be over."
The university sent updates about every 30 minutes, regardless of whether they had any new information, school spokesman Mark Owczarski said.
"It's crazy that someone would go and do something like that with all the stuff that happened in 2007," said Corey Smith, a 19-year-old sophomore from Mechanicsville, Va., who was headed to a dining hall near the site of one of the shootings.
He told The Associated Press that he stayed inside after seeing the alerts from the school. "It's just weird to think about why someone would do something like this when the school's had so many problems," Smith said.
Harry White, 20, a junior physics major, said he was in line for a sandwich at a restaurant in a campus building when he received the text message alert.
White said he didn't panic, thinking instead about a false alarm about a possible gunman that locked down the campus in August. White used an indoor walkway to go to a computer lab in an adjacent building, where he checked news reports.
"I decided to just check to see how serious it was. I saw it's actually someone shooting someone, not something false, something that looks like a gun," White said.
Campus was quieter than usual because classes ended Wednesday and students were preparing for exams, which were to begin Friday. The school postponed those tests until Saturday. The rest of the exam schedule would proceed as normal, the university said.
The student government association will hold a candlelight vigil Friday at 6:30 p.m.
Cook Counseling Center's main office in McComas Hall will be open tonight until 9 for any students needing assistance, the school announced. Counselors will be available Friday at the main office and the satellite office in East Eggleston Hall. The center will decide later if more hours are needed on Saturday.
Staff and employees may contact Value Options at 866-775-0602 or (540) 231-9331 to speak with a counselor on Friday.
Hearing on 2007 massacre
The shooting came soon after the conclusion of a hearing where Virginia Tech was appealing a $55,000 fine by the U.S. Education Department in connection with the university's response to the 2007 rampage.
The department said the school violated the law by waiting more than two hours after two students were shot to death in their dorm before sending an email warning. By then, student gunman Seung-Hui Cho was chaining the doors to a classroom building where he killed 30 more people and then himself.
The department said the email was too vague because it mentioned only a "shooting incident," not the deaths. During testimony Thursday, the university's police chief, Wendell Flinchum, said there were no immediate signs in the dorm to indicate a threat to the campus. He said the shootings were believed to be an isolated domestic incident and that the shooter had fled.
An administrative judge ended the hearing by asking each side to submit a brief by the end of January. It is unclear when he will rule.
Since the massacre, the school expanded its emergency notification systems. Alerts now go out by electronic message boards in classrooms, by text messages and other methods. Other colleges and universities have put in place similar systems.
Universities are required under the Clery Act to provide warnings in a timely manner and to report the number of crimes on campus.
During about a one-hour period today, the university issued four separate alerts.
Derek O'Dell, a third-year veterinary student at Virginia Tech who was wounded in the 2007 shooting, was shaken.
"It just brings up a lot of bad feelings, bad memories," O'Dell said. "You pray there are no more victims, and pray for the families."
O'Dell was monitoring the situation from his home a couple of miles from campus.
"At first I was just hoping it was a false alarm," he said. "Then there were reports of two people dead, and the second person shot was in the parking lot where I usually park to go to school so it was kind of surreal."
Lori Haas learned of today’s campus shooting this afternoon, shortly after she left the company of other relatives of Tech victims who attended the hearing.
“I’m sitting in my car double parked about two or three blocks from the hearing, sitting here crying,” said Haas, whose daughter was shot during the campus tragedy four years ago.
Today’s shooting also comes after gun-rights and gun-control advocates held dueling rallies at Tech on Nov. 17 over policies about carrying weapons on campus.
Heavy police response
Earlier today, as sirens blared, heavily armed police officers were seen running through the area around the roundabout at the end of Washington Street, and officers searched cars around the Cage. At the Coliseum, what appeared to be a body was covered with a cloth in a taped-off area of the parking lot. Officers there told a dozen student-age onlookers to leave for their own safety.
The campus was swarming with heavily armed officers walking around campus. Caravans of SWAT vehicles and other police cars with emergency lights flashing patrolled nearby. Students hunkered down in buildings.
"It sounds like all the systems worked pretty well," the governor said. "The students were all compliant" as soon as the warning sirens sounded on campus.
The student center was evacuated, according to the school's student newspaper, Collegiate Times. The student journalists reported that they were evacuated from their office and were reporting about the shooting on Twitter.
All Montgomery County schools also were reportedly on lockdown shortly after 2 p.m., but have since been released.
Nearby Radford University had not been locked down, but students were encouraged to avoid the Virginia Tech area. The northbound exit at a rest area on Interstate 81 near the university has been shut down for an incident, according to the Virginia Department of Transportation, but it is unknown if it is related to the shootings. State police during the afternoon news conference said they sent officers to the scene after reports of suspicious activity. The scene was still being processed at 5 p.m.
Police would not rule out a connection between the shootings and an armed robbery Wednesday in Radford, about 10 miles from Blacksburg. According to media reports, Radford police were looking for a man they considered armed and dangerous after an armed robbery at a local real estate office.
August lockdown
A report of a possible gunman at Virginia Tech on Aug. 4 set off the longest, most extensive lockdown and search on campus since the 2007 bloodbath led the university to overhaul its emergency procedures. No gunman was found, and the school gave the all-clear about five hours after sirens began wailing and students and staff members started receiving warnings by phone, email and text message to lock themselves indoors. Alerts were also posted on the university's website and Twitter accounts.
The emergency was triggered by three teens who were attending a summer program on campus and told police they saw a man walking quickly across the grounds with what might have been a handgun covered by a cloth, authorities said.
Police searched some 150 buildings on the square-mile campus and issued a composite sketch of a baby-faced man who was said to be wearing shorts and sandals, but they found no sign of him. They continued to patrol the grounds as a precaution even after the lockdown was lifted.
That incident marked the first time the entire campus was locked down since the 2007 shooting, and the second major test of Virginia Tech's improved emergency alert system. The system was revamped to add the use of text messages and other means besides email of warning students.
The system was also put to the test in 2008, when an exploding nail gun cartridge was mistaken for gunfire. But only one dorm was locked down during that emergency, and it reopened two hours later.
The Associated Press, The Roanoke Times and Virginian-Pilot staff writers Julian Walker and Lauren King contributed to this report.
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