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[Supermercado]

This is all over the news and I'm sure everyone knows about it by now... This is awful.

[elmono311]

Good golly, 22-32 people dead? By one person?

[Supermercado]

It's crazy.

[elmono311]

I hate these pansies who kill themselves instead of facing the music. Oh, yeah, you're all big and bad taking out all these people and you shoot yourself... idiots.

[Supermercado]

I think the jury may still be out on whether he killed himself or was killed by the police. At least, that's what the most recent posting on cnn.com says. I'm at work so I obviously don't have access to a TV and the absolute latest.

[elmono311]

I heard on the TV the idiot killed himself and it now says at least 32 killed

[Supermercado]

I've been hearing 32, too. I guess we'll find out all the details this evening and overnight as they sort this out. Damn shame.

[disnut8]

I probably won't post much on this topic.  I have some pretty strong feelings on certain things that I know some people will really flame me for.  Especially my daughter-in-law.

[elmono311]

Put on your flamesuit then, I want to hear it

[disnut8]

It's mostly about the criticism of the communication to the students about the first two deaths.  Very easy for everyone to be Monday morning quarterbacks.  The "they shoulda"s

[Supermercado]

It's hard to say whether they did the right thing or the wrong thing. If you think about it, VT is essentially a city of 26,000 people, much larger than many towns in this country. If there was a shooting or murder in Bellevue, say, the entire town wouldn't have come to a screeching halt. They sent out the email that told about it, which is more than a city would or could do, I'd imagine. Should they have canceled classes because of it? Maybe. A university, while similar in size to a small city, is still a school. Even if the decision had been made to cancel classes, the logistics of it come into play. Short of physically getting ahold of every single student, sending an email would have been the best way to contact all the students. And that's assuming that all the students would have even seen the email before showing up to their classes that morning. I always checked my email but what about the students who checked theirs once or twice a day in the computer labs? They certainly would have never seen that email that morning. What if they went on the local TV stations to announce it? Well, I can say that I would have never seen that since I never watched the local channels in the morning. If I watched TV at all, it would have been something like ESPN, which would have done me no good.

I'm rambling and probably not making sense and I'm not really sure if I've even got a point one way or another. It's hard to say and you know what they say about hindsight.

[elmono311]

I'd have to agree. I rarely check my school e-mail and by law school officials and teachers are only allowed to contact you through the school's e-mail and through no other e-mail service. And I don't watch the local stations until primetime when all the shows are on. And, obviously, they're not going to call everybody. I did see on the news one reporter asking the guy in charge or whatever why they didn't shut the school down after the first two shootings. He pretty much said was Super said: Virginia Tech is pretty much like a city. It's hard to close down a large school like that when there are numerous ways off of campus to begin with. Plus these shootings happened early in the morning. How many college kids do you think would really be up at that time if they don't have class?

So Virginia Tech did what it could do in a situation like that. However, they didn't know it was going to turn into the shooting rampage it ended up as. No one could have known that.

[Zorchenhimer]

So Virginia Tech did what it could do in a situation like that. However, they didn't know it was going to turn into the shooting rampage it ended up as. No one could have known that.

Two hours after the first shooting the guy walked into a classroom, closed and locked (chained?) the door, and started to unload on the students in the room. They could have at least found the guy before he killed more people two whole hours later.

[elmono311]

Try to do a low key manhunt on a campus with 20,000 students, not including faculty and other personnel. Making it any higher key and the people panic, making it even harder to find the guy. First the authorites have to find witnesses, which there may not have been many at 7 in the morning. That kind of makes it hard to find the shooter. And forget about forensics. You think they can find anything concrete in two hours?

[Supermercado]

The place this discussion is headed is exactly why I think it's just so hard to say whether they did the right thing or not. It really just makes the whole thing that much worse.

[Zorchenhimer]

They have videos off of students cellphones of what happened at the first shooting. They could have found a witness if they tried hard enough. Also, there where already loads of cops heading to the campus, so wouldn't that, if anything, start a panic? Besides, you said yourself, "Plus these shootings happened early in the morning. How many college kids do you think would really be up at that time if they don't have class?". Now, if you aren't awake, would you still panic?

Edit:
This doesn't go along with what I just finished saying, but it makes a valid point. Even though it blows everything out of proportion.



(found that on another forum)

[disnut8]

Holy crap, Super.  You said exactly what I was saying all day Monday. Only I used Maumee as my reference point.  Some guy cuts down two people at the crappy Days Inn (elmono knows what I'm talking about).  Even with photo ID, where the hell are you going to find him?  He could have been halfway to Detroit by the time the cops got there, secured the crime scene and started interviewing witnesses.  Then two hours later, the guy goes onto Owens Community College campus and starts shooting up a class building.

And I'm shocked that my son actually agrees with me.

Real life ain't like CSI.  I'm constantly amazed that they seem to solve a crime within one shift.

[LostArtofRolando]

yeah, true.  even if folks did have evidence on their cellphones, once again it takes more than 2 hours to dissect and disseminate that kinda stuff.

[Vengeance]

It's common sense to think if a guy kills two people, he's not sticking around. So this guy did. So what? Telling people about the deaths wouldn't stop them from going to class.

We just had two people killed near my campus and the guy was on the loose. We thought it sucked, but still went to class. Nobody can predict this shit will happen.

Sorry, but I don't want to live in a paranoid world where just because someone dies horribly means I'm going to believe I will, too.

[elmono311]

I don't flee the city and the police don't lock it down when someone is killed here. It is pretty much the same concept. There's a lot of places where the college is the town.

[Zorchenhimer]

Nobody can predict this shit will happen.

This guy was a nut. He said himself "I die like Jesus Christ" (its on the right). Also, from what I've heard, the teachers have had an eye on him because he was acting very strange.

[disnut8]

This guy was a nut. He said himself "I die like Jesus Christ" (its on the right). Also, from what I've heard, the teachers have had an eye on him because he was acting very strange.

Again, it's all Monday morning quarterbacking.  Yeah, the teachers had some concerns about him.  His stories were what could be considered extreme.  But come on - it was a creative writing class.  Creative.  As in make things up.  I'm sorry but if writiers start getting their work censored or put under a microscope you might as well call for the end of any kind creative freedoms.  Stephen King wrote some unusual stuff when he was in college (and even earlier).  Thank goodness no one told him he needed to not write that stuff anymore.

And before anyone starts going off on how Stephen King is a horror novelist, pick up his book Eyes of the Dragon and read it.  Then tell me everything he writes, has published, and is on the best selling list is a horror novel.  Or the Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon.  Or the fantastic The Dark Tower series.  That's shelved in the libraries under Fantasy.

It's common sense to think if a guy kills two people, he's not sticking around. So this guy did. So what? Telling people about the deaths wouldn't stop them from going to class.

Holy crap, Vengeance evens takes the same point of view as me! *falls over in a faint*

[elmono311]

I knew NASCAR would do something for it

LINK

[Zorchenhimer]

I think my school is sending one of those massive posters with all of the students, faculty, and staff's signatures. I'm not sure 'cuz I was home over the weekend, till tuesday.

[elmono311]

Some tributes from the sports world.

Ward Burton's ride:


Washington Nationals on Tuesday: