At least 32 people were killed and 29 wounded in yesterday's shooting rampage, the worst ever on an American campus. The gunman, a 23-year-old South Korean student, Cho Seung-hui (right), killed himself. It is thought that his first victim was an ex-girlfriend.
The mayhem took place at Virginia Tech, where 25,000 students live and study in brick and stone buildings spread over 2,600 acres.
The victims died in two locations, starting with two dead in a dormitory at 7.15am. But the majority - 26 students and four teachers - were gunned down two hours later in Norris Hall, a teaching block on the campus.
Why did the university's own armed police force, the first to respond, fail to 'lock down' the campus after the first shootings? The initial answer was that the police thought the dormitory killings |
 |
|
 |
 |
|
Will the White House
candidates now have to
face
the realities of
US gun law, asks charles laurence |
| |
'domestic' and that the killer had left the campus.
They were wrong. The discovery today that the same weapons, including a Glock 9mm, were used at the dorm building and later at Norris Hall proves Seung-Hui was responsible for all the killings. Parents have called for the firing of both the university's president, Charles Steger, and police chief, Wendell Flinchum.
The disaster is sure to ignite America's debate over gun laws and the nature of its society which produces murder rates of ten times European countries.
President Bush said that schools "should be places of safety and sanctuary and learning", and resorted to prayer: "We hold the victims in our hearts, we lift them up in our prayers."
Last year five little girls were murdered in an Amish one-room schoolhouse. In 1999, 12 students 
|
