Rampage raises many questions

Blacksburg, Virginia: Police and university officials faced pressure yesterday to explain how a gunman evaded detection between killing two people and going on to kill 30 others two hours later in the United States' worst shooting rampage.

The man killed himself in a classroom at Virginia Tech university after opening fire on students and staff in an apparently premeditated massacre on Monday, leaving the sprawling rural campus reeling with grief and shock. Two people were shot dead earlier in a shooting at a dormitory.

The gunman was identified as Cho Seung-hui, 23, a senior in the university's English department who lived on campus.

"He was a loner, and we're having difficulty finding information about him," school spokesman Larry Hincker said.

One law enforcement official said Cho was carrying a backpack that contained receipts for a March purchase of a Glock 9 mm pistol.

Not definitive

Col Steve Flaherty, superintendent of the Virginia State Police, said it was reasonable to assume that Cho was the shooter in both attacks but that link was yet definitive.

"There's no evidence of any accomplice at either event, but we're exploring the possibility," he said.

"I don't even know if any of my friends were killed, because it was so hard to get in touch with anyone last night," said Brittany Jones, a 19-year-old Tech student from Urbanna, Virginia, early on last morning.

"Even if they weren't, it wouldn't make it any less sad. You don't expect this to happen at your school. We're just kids," she said, as she watched members of the university's military corps drill before class.

Some of the uniformed cadets were crying and hugging one another on the drill field, which was to host a candlelight vigil in memory of the shooting victims last night.

Television images of terrified students and police dragging out bloody victims revived memories of the Columbine High School massacre in 1999 and were likely to renew heated debate about America's gun laws.

Chains

Police said the gunman appeared to have used chains to lock doors and prevent victims from escaping. Fifteen people were wounded, including those shot and students hurt jumping from windows in a desperate attempt to flee the gunfire.

"There were leg, arm, head, face [injuries], the more critical ones actually had head or facial shots. There were chest shots, leg shots, arm shots. He was just shooting to kill," said Dr Joseph Cacioppo, an emergency room physician who treated the wounded.

Many students expressed anger that they were not warned of any danger until more than two hours after the first attack at a dormitory - and then only in an e-mail from the university.

"We knew that there was a shooting but we thought it was confined to a particular setting," Steger told reporters, explaining the lack of more urgent measures such as evacuating the sprawling grounds or shutting down the whole campus, which has more than 25,000 full-time students.

Meanwhile, distraught family members and friends kept up an anxious vigil Tuesday desperate for news of loved ones still missing after a US campus massacre, as others waited by hospital bedsides.

Cho on Monday stalked from classroom to classroom in one of the university's engineering blocks, mowing down people as he went. He killed at least 30 people in four classrooms and a stairwell before shooting himself. In an earlier incident two people were also killed in a dormitory.