Campus shooting still a mystery

Blacksburg, Virginia: Police are trying to determine why a 22-year-old part-time Radford University student fatally shot a police officer on the campus of nearby Virginia Tech on Thursday afternoon, and then turned the gun on himself.

The gunman, identified by police late on Friday as Ross Truett Ashley, of Spotsylvania County, had no apparent connection to Tech Police Officer Deriek Crouse, 39, who was slain as he sat in his cruiser, police said.

A day earlier, authorities said, Ashley was suspected of walking into a real estate office in Radford with a gun, demanding car keys and stealing a white Mercedes SUV.

That car was found on Thursday on Virginia Tech's campus. Radford University officials said in a statement that Ashley was enrolled part-time as a business management major, but declined further comment.

Exactly what led to the violence remains unclear, but police have said they think Ashley acted alone. They are working to piece together his movements in the hours before the shooting, which occurred just after noon on Thursday in the university's coliseum parking lot.

Crouse had just pulled over a driver in an unrelated incident. Police said Ashley, dressed in a maroon hoodie and grey hat, walked up to Crouse's cruiser and opened fire. Crouse, who also is an Army reservist who served in Iraq, left a wife and five children and stepchildren.

‘A good kid'

"Motive is very much a fundamental part of this investigation," said Corinne Geller, a spokeswoman for the Virginia State police. Ashley appears to have graduated from Spotsylvania High School in 2007 and was a running back on the football team.

He won numerous academic awards, according to published reports at that time. He also appears to have started his academic career at the University of Virginia's Wise County campus, where he made dean's list in 2008, according to online records. "He was a good kid," said Barry Perry, who knew Ashley when he was an athlete at Spotsylvania High.

The Thursday shooting created a sense of deja vu for a campus still healing from the 2007 massacre, in which a disturbed student fatally shot 32 people and himself. Students gathered for vigils again. They lit candles once more and were grappling with the same unanswerable questions. On Thursday, students silently lit candles, cried and prayed at the site.