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Eyewitnesses give their accounts to media of the horrific shooting rampage at Virginia Tech university overnight.
This eyewitness account was filed by a student, Paul, for his injured girlfriend, Kate. He posted it on this Live Journal blog
I woke up this morning in
Kate's bed to the sound of not one, but two alarms waking us up for classes and whatnot. I remember telling Kate the night before that I was going to come onto campus with her at 9am so that I could go to the library to get some work done. The alarm blares and I realize I have absolutely no motivation to leave the bed. Kate tells me it's ok, she keeps telling me that she'll be back in an hour anyways, so it will be ok if she came back and saw my lying right where she left me. I agree with a firm roll over and immediately go back to sleep.
I wake up again to the blare of my own alarm telling me that it's time to get up for my own class. I hit the snooze button, and simply lie there. I overhear a lot of commotion in the main room, Kali and Steph are awake and talking about something. Kali then enters the kitchen and calls someone which I overhear, and heard the magical words that class is canceled for today. Lying in bed, this is the greatest news I could have ever heard, I get out of bed, put on clothes real quick and come out, and greet the roomates. They simply point to the tv where I find out that there has been yet another shooting on campus. First in AJ which is where Kate lived for two years, and then in Norris hall. I try calling kate but she isn't answering her phone. I am assuming she is in Mcbride because I have had a few German classes in that building but I'm not sure. We check her schedule to find out that she in fact had her German class in Norris Hall. Now I'm freaked out, and franticly try to call her, but she isn't picking up.
Fast forward a couple minutes, i get a call from Montgomery hospital. A very kind nurse, wanted to give me a message from Katelyn Carney. I obviously oblige and ask what the message is. She says, ok, the message is "I've got red on me" Of course I instantly think, what a hilarious thing to say in a situation like this, but at the same time, I'm now MORE worried than i was before, and ask the nurse if she is able to patch me through to kate.
Right as she picks up the phone she tells me "I got red on me" I laugh, and immediately try to find out if she's hurt or what to expect, and she lets me know that she's fine, stable, good, not hurt...only slightly.
The story goes that she was in class and they heard a banging, her teacher opened the door to find out what was going on, and after not seeing anything, closed the door. Not more than two seconds later, a gunman entered her room, to which the class responded by getting underneath the desks and basicly hiding as well as possible from this guy. He then shot at the class somewhere between 8 to 12 times and then left. Kate was hit in the hand by a stray bullet, after speaking with her on the phone while she was/is at the hospital, I found out that she still has a piece of a bullet lodged into her hand, and has fractions on her index and pinky finger. She is about to go into surgery to get that cleaned up and will be there for the next three days. Again she was not specific on exactly what transpired there, but it must have been very stressful for her. She said that the gunman, who looked Asian, left and She and another classmate barricaded the door while others attended to the wounded and injured. The gunman came back and tried to get in, but because of the barricade couldn't and proceeded to shoot at the door at hip level, while kate was and the other classmates were at ground level.
He wandered off after that, I don't know what happened to him after that, except the police say he's dead. Anyways, the class was then escorted by police to the drillfield where they got into cop cars and then ambulances, which is how kate is now at montgomery hostpital. She is truly my hero for not only going through such an experience but also by being able to take action and make sure that this gunman was unable to return to the classroom.
the police now say that 22 are dead. I remember kate crying on the phone saying that she didn't think the teacher Herr Bishop made it out of the whole thing. I'm not sure on that one either.
Because of what's transpiring, my phone cannot connect to the network, its constantly busy. For everyone who has been calling me wondering what's going on, I'm sorry, I'll try to get back to everyone as soon as possible.
Erin Sheehan, one of four people to walk out of her class, described the scene to the Collegiate Times.
"I saw bullets hit people's bodies. There was blood everywhere. People in the class were passed out, I don't know whether from shock or pain. But I was one of only four that made it out of that classroom. The rest were dead or injured."
She described the shooter as "just a normal looking kid, Asian, but he had on a Boy Scout type outfit. He wore a tan button up vest, and this black vest, maybe it was for ammo or something."
Andrew Gisch, a second-year student, spoke to Reuters and said he was walking across a quadrangle listening to his iPod when he heard "a big bang."
"I recognized the sound of gunfire but was mostly confused .... I looked around at the other students on the drillfield, most of them confused like myself....it clicked in everyone's head immediately the sound we heard was a gun shot and everyone started running. I went back to the dorm, locked the door, and turned on the news."
Daniel Smith told Reuters he was aware of shootings at other schools but he never thought it could happen at this university.
"It hits you in the heart. It's more of a shock to me because I'm an engineering major and when that list (victims' names) comes out, I know I'm going to see some friends on there and its scaring me inside right now."
Student Matt Waldron spoke to CNN and said he did not hear the gunshots because he was listening to music, but he heard police sirens and saw officers hiding behind trees with their guns drawn.
"They told us to get out of there so we ran across the drill field as quick as we could," he told CNN.
"It was kind of scary," he said. "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."
Kostayne Link told the Roanoke Times she was headed to a class in Norris Hall when some 15 police cars passed by with their sirens blaring, followed by two ambulances and a team of police commandos.
"We heard a couple gunshots and we started running," she said. "Everyone was sprinting away. There were literally, like, 300, 400 students just running away from the site. They just told us all to get going, and we started running."
Trey Perkins spoke to MSNBC TV about the gunman, and said the most striking thing about the shooter was his stoic demeanour.
"He looked, I guess you could say, serious. He didn't look frightened at all, he didn't look angry. Just a straight face. He didn't say a single word the whole time. He didn't say get down, he didn't say anything. He just came in and started shooting."
Student Nikolas Macko gave his eyewitness account to the BBC:
"I was in class when we heard loud bangs coming from the hallway. The girl sitting by the door peeked out and saw the shooter, so she immediately closed the door. Three other students moved a table and barricaded the door.
"A few seconds later, the shooter tried to open the door, but my classmates kept it well shut. The shooter shot the door twice, one of which hit the podium in the front of the classroom and the other continued out the window. At this point he reloaded, shot the door again - this shot did not penetrate - and moved on to the other classrooms."
"Thankfully, nobody in our room was hurt. The shooting continued for several minutes, until the police arrived, and the shooter must have shot at least 80-100 rounds. As we heard the police arrive outside the building, the shooting continued, and the officers eventually came through the building. Even though it seemed to take quite a long time, the timer on my phone seemed to indicate that the whole sequence of events was over in only 25 minutes."
Another student, Timothy Owen, told the BBC:
"We are in total shock, and it's still setting in.
"The fact that 20 people have been shot on my campus is totally unthinkable and unbelievable. This is a terrible tragedy, one that will have a lasting impact on this university for years to come."
Professor Dennis Hong told the BBC he was at work on campus when he heard shots.
"I was working in my office and then I heard three "bang bang bang" sounds and I looked outside and I saw a bunch of police officers, guns drawn, hiding behind trees."
Kristyn Heiser told CNN she was in class about 9.30 am when she and her classmates saw about six gun-wielding police officers run by a window.
"We were like, 'What's going on?' Because this definitely is a quaint town where stuff doesn't really happen. It's pretty boring here," said Heiser during a phone interview with CNN as she sat on her classroom floor.
Another student, Tiffany Otey, spoke to CNN and said she and her classmates initially thought the gunshots were construction noise until they heard screaming and police officers with bulletproof vests and machine guns entered her classroom.
"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."
Jason Grieves spoke to the Virginian Pilot:
"One death, that was a shock. But when you hear 20 people dead, that's when it's real, it really clicked."
First year student Kristen Walker told the Virginian Pilot:
"Everything's pretty bare and dead - nobody's outside anymore. Sirens have been going off for hours. We're all pretty freaked out... There are all kinds of rumours flying about."
