Some Virginia Tech officials knew about the first shootings at the Blacksburg university in April 2007 and had locked down their offices about 20 minutes before student gunman Seung-Hui Cho burst into Norris Hall, chained its doors shut and killed 30 people before taking his own life, according to e-mails and memos released Tuesday by lawyers of the victims’ families.
The co-director of the university office responsible for emergency response planning sent an e-mail to her family before a campuswide emergency e-mail was sent out, and forwarded the emergency alert to people outside of the university before police arrived at Norris Hall, according to lawyer Peter Grenier.
Bernadette Lenahan Mondy sent the following e-mail to her family at 9:25 a.m.: “There is an active shooter on campus and it’s making national news. My office is in lockdown. This is horrible. I’ll let you know when it’s over.”
A campuswide e-mail alert sent at 9:26 a.m. said a shooting incident had occurred and urged the university community to be “cautious.”
A more forceful draft of the alert that was never sent said one student was dead and one injured.
Former Virginia State Police Superintendent W. Gerald Massengill, chairman of a panel commissioned by Gov. Tim Kaine to investigate the shootings, said many students he interviewed who were in Norris Hall that day said they would not have gone to class had they known a gunman was on campus.
The panel’s report concluded that “the protocol for sending an emergency message in use on April 16 was cumbersome, untimely and problematic when a decision was needed as soon as possible,” among other criticisms.
Had the earlier draft of the alert e-mail been sent out, “the danger on campus would have been immediately evident,” Grenier said. “Lives could have and should have been saved.”
University representatives did not return repeated calls Wednesday.
Grenier also said the Virginia Tech president defended university officials’ actions, although the university did not reveal that several officials had already been in lockdown. A campuswide lockdown order was not issueduntil 10:15 a.m.
At 9:42 a.m., students called 911 to report that shots had been fired in Norris Hall, and police arrived at 9:45 a.m. to find the building’s doors chained shut. Grenier represented many of the victims’ families in the $11 million settlement reached with Virginia that was approved Tuesday.
