The Virginia Tech Shooting: A Tragedy, Its Aftermath, and Lasting Impact

The Virginia Tech shooting, a horrific event that unfolded on April 16, 2007, remains one of the deadliest mass shootings in United States history. This article delves into the details of the tragedy, its immediate aftermath, and the long-term impact it had on university safety protocols, mental health awareness, and gun control legislation.

The Unfolding of a Tragedy

The Virginia Tech massacre was a spree shooting and mass shooting that occurred on Monday, April 16, 2007, comprising two attacks on the campus of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) in Blacksburg, Virginia, United States. The event began in the early hours of the morning and involved two separate locations on the campus.

Initial Attack at West Ambler Johnston Hall

The first incident took place in West Ambler Johnston Hall, a residence hall. Seung-Hui Cho, a student at the university, encountered Emily Hilscher, a freshman, and killed her. Resident assistant Ryan Clark went to investigate noise when he encountered Cho, who shot and killed Clark before fleeing the building. Police responded to a 911 call about the shootings fifteen minutes later. Believing the shootings at the dormitory were an isolated incident, they secured the location and began their investigation.

Devastation at Norris Hall

More than two hours after the first incident, another shooting continued on the second floor of Norris Hall. When they arrived at the building, they found the doors chained shut from the inside. Cho geared up in empty Room 200 before the shooting began and looked into several classrooms, likely to see how many people were in each room. With the locks and chains, he chained the three main entrance doors shut and placed a note on one, saying that attempting to open the door would cause a bomb to explode. Shortly before the shooting began, a faculty member found the note and took it to the third floor to notify the school's administration. At about the same time, Cho had begun to shoot students and faculty on the second floor.

Police broke into the building and followed the sounds of gunfire to the second floor, where they found that Cho had committed suicide. Before taking his own life, Cho had killed more than thirty people.

Acts of Bravery and Survival

In Room 211 of Intermediate French, Jocelyne Couture-Nowak saw Cho heading towards the doorway. She and student Henry Lee barricaded the door with a few desks while she yelled at students to get down on the floor and under their desks and call 9-1-1. Cho pushed through the barricade and entered the room, killing Nowak and Lee who fell behind the door. A student named Matthew La Porte, who was a trained Air Force ROTC member of the Virginia Tech Corps of Cadets, charged towards Cho and attempted to tackle him, but died after being shot seven times during his attempt to save his class.

Across the hall in Room 204, Liviu Librescu, a Holocaust survivor from Romania, forcibly prevented the gunman from entering the room by holding the door closed with his body until most of his students escaped through the windows. Librescu was shot through the door four times.

The Aftermath Inside Norris Hall

During the two attacks, Cho killed a total of 32 people - 5 faculty members and 27 students - before he died by suicide. The Virginia Tech Review Panel reported that Cho's gunshots wounded seventeen others; six more were injured when they jumped from second-story windows to escape from Librescu's classroom.

At 9:50 am, 10 minutes after the second shooting began, a SWAT team started to enter the building. As police started to descend the stairwell, Cho had already begun to hear the footsteps. He looked out into the hallway briefly, before going back into the center of room 211 towards the windows and, just as police reached the second floor, shot himself in the temple with the Glock 19 and died instantly. When police arrived at room 211, they saw Cho lying on the ground with his guns beside him, and some students, who were either injured or playing dead, heard the officer's first words: "Gunman down!".

The Investigation and Review

The shooter was identified as 23-year-old Seung-Hui Cho, a senior at Virginia Tech. Almost two years prior, Cho was evaluated by a psychiatric hospital after several female classmates told police they had received unsettling messages from him, and another classmate suggested Cho was suicidal. However, he was not deemed a threat to others at the time. It was recommended that Cho seek counseling on an outpatient basis. Around this time, author Nikki Giovanni, a teacher at Virginia Tech, asked that Cho be removed from her poetry class after he turned in disturbing writings. Classmates accused him of secretly taking pictures of them. Lucinda Roy, then a director of the creative writing department, started teaching Cho one-on-one. She too found Cho’s writings upsetting, and she contacted campus police and university administrators. However, because Cho did not make any explicit threats, no official reports were filed. Cho passed a criminal background check and purchased two guns early in 2007.

The Virginia Tech Review Panel

Three days later, Virginia Governor Timothy M. Kaine commissioned a panel of experts to investigate the tragedy and recommend improvements to Virginia laws, policies, procedures, systems and institutions to help prevent similar incidents in the future. The Virginia Tech Review Panel, commissioned by Virginia Governor Tim Kaine, was tasked with reviewing the events of April 16, 2007, the killing of 32 and injuring of 17 students and faculty on the campus of Virginia Tech, and assessing the actions taken and not taken, identifying lessons learned, and proposing alternatives for the future. In addition, the panel reviewed the emergency response by all parties and the ensuing aftermath.

Key Findings of the Review Panel

After conducting over 200 interviews and reviewing thousands of pages of records and reports, the Virginia Tech Review Panel presented several findings. Highlights of these findings include:

Senior Seung Hui Cho exhibited signs of mental health problems during his childhood through high school and in 1999 was observed with suicidal and homicidal ideations
Due to lack of resources, incorrect interpretation of privacy laws, and passivity, there was a failure in providing Cho with needed support and services in late 2005 and early 2006
Virginia’s mental health laws are flawed and services for mental health users are inadequate
Virginia is one of only 22 States that report any information about mental health to a Federal database used to conduct background checks on would-be gun purchasers
The Virginia Tech Police Department erred in not requesting that the Policy Group issue a campus-wide notification that two persons had been killed and that everyone should be on alert
State systems for rapidly deploying trained professional staff to help families attain resources did not work
Virginia colleges and universities need to work together as a coordinated system of State-supported institutions.

Immediate Aftermath and Response

After the full extent of the shooting became evident, the university canceled classes for the rest of the week and held an assembly and candlelight vigil the following evening, on April 17. The day following the shooting, a memorial event was held at Cassell Coliseum. The event included a speech by then-President George W. Bush. Within a day after the shootings, Virginia Tech, whose supporters call themselves "Hokies" - a nickname coined in a school cheer dating to 1896 - formed the Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund (HSMF) to help remember and honor the victims. The fund was used to cover expenses including, but not limited to: assistance to victims and their families, grief counseling, memorials, communications expenses, and comfort expenses. Early in June 2007, the Virginia Tech Foundation announced that $3.2 million was moved from the HSMF into 32 separately-named endowment funds, each created in honor of a victim killed in the shooting. This transfer brought each fund to the level of full endowment, allowing them to operate in perpetuity. The naming and determination of how each fund would be directed was being developed with the victims' families. By early June 2007, donations to the HSMF had reached approximately $7 million.

Criticism of Virginia Tech's Response

Virginia Tech officials were widely criticized for their response to the shootings. The report showed that the university failed to alert students that there was a shooter on campus for more than two hours. It determined the university’s reaction to the first shooting contributed to the loss of life in the second shooting.

Legal and Financial Repercussions

Virginia Tech, along with the state government, paid an $11.1 million settlement to the families of the victims. The university also made major renovations to the buildings where the shootings occurred, upgraded the campus security program, and set up an online Office of Emergency Management. In 2012 a jury found that the Commonwealth of Virginia was liable in a wrongful death civil suit brought by the families of two students killed in the massacre and consequently awarded each of the two families $4 million. (The families had not taken part in the 2008 $11.1 million settlement.) The commonwealth appealed the decision and in October 2013 the Virginia state supreme court reversed the wrongful-death finding, saying that neither Virginia Tech officials nor the commonwealth could not have foreseen further violence from Cho after the initial attack, and therefore were not negligent in failing to protect the students.

EMS Response

The chapter of the report that primarily deals with the EMS response is one of the longest chapters in the report. It discusses prehospital treatment, transport and the hospital care of the wounded patients, as well as transport of the deceased. In addition, the panel was tasked with evaluating the on-scene EMS response, implementation of mass-casualty and ICS plans (including NIMS compliance and patient stabilization) both in the field and at the hospital, the types of communications systems used and coordination of resources. The introduction to the chapter praises the overall EMS response and commends those providers who responded and rendered care.

Initial Response to West Ambler Johnston Hall

This section of the report outlines the response to the West Ambler Johnston Residence Hall, the scene of the first two murders. VTRS was initially dispatched for an injury from a fall, and the VTRS crew arrived on scene within five minutes of dispatch. Providers found a tragic scene: two patients with gunshot wounds to the head. A medevac was initially requested, but denied due to inclement weather. Both patients were assessed, immobilized and treated quickly and aggressively. Both were transported from the scene within 15 minutes of VTRS arrival. One patient went into cardiac arrest en route and was pronounced dead on arrival at Montgomery Regional Hospital (MRH). The other arrived at MRH and was intubated in the ED, then transported to Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital (CRMH) in Roanoke.

Response to Norris Hall

Shortly after returning to service after the first incident, VTRS crews overheard police radio traffic advising of an active shooting at Norris Hall. At that time, a VTRS officer assumed EMS Command and established an incident command post at the VTRS station. VTRS also contacted the Montgomery County EMS Coordinator to place units outside the campus on standby. At that point, the Montgomery County communications center paged out an "all call," requesting any available units to respond to Norris Hall. Four minutes after overhearing the radio traffic, VTRS was dispatched to Norris Hall for multiple shootings. The EMS Commander advised any units responding from outside the Virginia Tech campus to stage at BVRS, rather than coming directly to Norris Hall. VTPD arrived at Norris Hall three minutes after dispatch. Five minutes later, emergency response teams from VTPD and Blacksburg Police arrived on scene, each with a tactical medic. Those teams immediately entered the building, and two minutes later, the medics began triaging patients police were bringing to them. The two tactical medics proceeded through the second floor of Norris Hall, where the majority of the shootings occurred. Twenty minutes after arrival on scene, VTPD announced that the shooter was down and that EMS crews could enter the building. The EMS Command assigned a Triage Officer, and triage of patients continued both inside and outside Norris Hall. Critical patients were transported to local hospitals via ambulance, and noncritical patients were moved to a secondary triage area. Providers confirmed 31 people were dead, and the decision was made not to attempt resuscitation.

Just over an hour after the initial dispatch, all patients from Norris Hall were transported to hospitals or moved to secondary treatment units. In addition to VTRS, 14 agencies from the area responded to Virginia Tech that morning to transport patients, and additional agencies provided interfacility transportation of critical victims. Twenty-seven ambulances and more than 120 EMS personnel were utilized, and assisted with coverage through established mutual aid agreements.

EMS Incident Command System

The panel report goes into some detail on the EMS Incident Command System (ICS) utilized at Virginia Tech. That ICS structure was based on NIMS guidelines, using an EMS Commander, Triage Officer, Treatment Officer and Staging Officer.

Transport of the Deceased

Later that afternoon, the medical examiner authorized the removal of the deceased from Norris Hall to the medical examiner's office in Roanoke. Several options were considered, including the use of refrigerated trucks, funeral coaches or EMS units. It was decided that, though not generally used for transports of the deceased, EMS units would be acceptable, being that 9-1-1 response to the area would not be compromised, and that refrigerated trucks and funeral vehicles on campus may be undesirable. An unidentified police official issued an order that EMS vehicles transport the decedents to Roanoke under emergency conditions (lights and sirens).

Hospital Response

Twenty-seven patients were treated at area hospitals. The report says it's unknown if individuals involved in the shootings may have been treated at other hospitals, clinics or doctors' offices. Most of the hospitals involved initiated internal ICS and mobilized internal resources in anticipation of potential patient surges.

Lessons Learned from EMS Response

The report contains over 70 key findings. The chapter addressing the EMS response contains 21, both positive lessons and areas for improvement. The panel makes 10 recommendations based on its findings.

Impact and Legacy

The tragedy of the Virginia Tech massacre caused colleges and universities across the United States to reassess their safety systems and review existing programs for helping students with mental illnesses. After a state panel investigated the incident, a law was passed requiring Virginia’s public universities to set up teams to examine students’ medical, criminal, and academic records to assess possible threats. The state’s private universities were exempted from the law, but many set up similar teams in the effort to prevent future acts of violence.

Changes in Gun Control Laws

The Virginia Tech shootings also led to a change in gun-control laws. In 2008, President George W. Bush signed legislation that would provide incentives for states to report mentally ill and other potentially dangerous individuals to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, an FBI database used to determine whether a person should be barred from purchasing a firearm.

Strengthening the NICS

The shooting prompted the state of Virginia to close legal loopholes that had allowed individuals adjudicated as mentally unsound to purchase handguns without detection by the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). The law strengthening the NICS was signed by President George W. Bush.

In 2007, only eight states had laws requiring or explicitly authorizing the reporting of prohibiting mental health records to NICS. Between 2007 and 2017, 35 states passed new reporting laws and, by the end of 2017, 43 states had reporting laws in place. The NICS Improvement Act made new federal funding available to states, known as the NICS Act Record Improvement Program (“NARIP”) funding, for upgrading their systems to submit NICS records.

Between December 2008 and December 2017, the number of state-submitted mental health records in NICS increased by more than nine times, from just over 531,000 to nearly 4,973,000. As the number of mental health records in NICS has increased, so has the number of firearm sale denials to individuals prohibited due to mental illness.

Mental Health Reporting

States with reporting laws have submitted more than twice as many records per capita than states without laws - 1,600 vs. 700 per 100,000 people, respectively. As the number of mental health records in NICS has increased, so has the number of firearm sales denied to people prohibited by mental illness.

Despite widespread progress in the improvement of reporting systems, there are likely hundreds of thousands of prohibiting mental health records that remain missing from NICS. All 50 states need reporting laws.

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