SALON

Wednesday, Mar 7, 2012 2:09 AM UTC

Attorney Criticizes Va. Tech Response To Shootings

By

Topics: From the Wires,

CHRISTIANSBURG, Va. (AP) — Attorneys representing the families of two victims of the 2007 Virginia Tech shootings on Tuesday described campus police as bumbling and slow to react, while attorneys representing the state of Virginia defended university officials who believed a domestic incident led to the initial deaths instead of a campus-wide threat.

The families of Julia K. Pryde and Erin N. Peterson are seeking a judgment of $100,000 for each family in the wrongful death claim. They have said their primary interest is to get a full accounting of the events of that day, plus an apology.

Attorneys for the victim’s parents have said if the university responded immediately after the dormintory shootings of the two students in the dorm, those students and others on campus might have survived the April 16, 2007 killing spree of Seung-Hui Cho.

Peter R. Messitt, one of the attorneys representing the state in the civil wrongful death case, said in hindsight, the belief of university officials that the initial killings in a dormitory on the Blacksburg campus arose from a domestic incident was wrong.

“What happened later that morning was unimaginable,” Messitt said in his opening statement of the 30 other people who would be killed before a student gunman killed himself.

Plaintiffs’ attorney Michael A. Kernbach described to jurors the bloody scene at West Ambler Johnston Hall, where the first two students — Emily Hilscher and Ryan Clark — were shot.

Virginia Tech campus police were sent to the dorm and concluded almost immediately that the two died in a domestic killing, he said. Both victims suffered horrific gunshot injuries. Clark was found dead at the scene and Hilscher died later.

Thirteen bloody footprints led away from the blood-splattered room where they were found, meaning a suspect would have had blood on his shoes and likely blood on his clothing, making him an easy target for police to track, Kernbach said.

Officers who had never investigated a homicide were the first to arrive at the scene. They concluded the deaths were from a domestic incident, he said. An hour later, students were on the way to classes on the 2,000-acre campus.

“The Virginia Tech Police Department didn’t tell anyone that a gunman was loose on the campus,” he said.

University officials issued their warning to more than 30,000 on the campus more than 2 1/2 hours later — shortly before Cho chained the doors of Norris Hall, a classroom building, and killed 30 more, including Pryde and Peterson. He then killed himself.

Police were focused on finding Hilscher’s boyfriend, Karl Thornhill, who was arrested as he approached the Tech campus after a friend reported a shooting incident at Hilscher’s dorm. He was quickly eliminated as a suspect.

“Nobody was looking for someone wearing bloody clothes and bloody tennis shoes,” he said.

That left students in a “zone of danger,” he said.

Robert Hall, another attorney for the families, ended his opening statements by showing jurors photos of Pryde and Peterson. Their parents, who were seated at the defense table, either sobbed or looked away.

Messitt said police used evidence at the dormitory shooting — including there was no signs of forced entry — to conclude Hilscher and Clark were victims of a domestic killing. Cho was “so unremarkable” he was able to enter one of the largest dorms on campus, fire a 9mm-handgun at two students and walk away, he said.

“He shot two people and nobody saw him,” Messitt said. The first calls to police reported that someone might have fallen out of a loft bed.

Cho, he said, “set out to slaughter as many students as he could,” adding that the gunman was “intent on human destruction.”

Tech Police Chief Wendell Flinchum, who is scheduled to testify on Wednesday, did not believe there was a threat on campus based upon his officers’ reports from the scene, Messitt said.

“If he believed there was a threat to that campus, he would have issued an alert,” Messitt said.

While Messitt acknowledged that “mistakes were made, they were few and far between.”

“This is a heartbreaking case,” he said.

Attorneys for the Prydes and Petersons called their first witnesses Tuesday, including Thornhill, the “person of interest” who diverted police attention from Cho, and others, who said the university had not balked in the past to issue campus-wide alerts for seemingly minor events.

Hall has also said Tech President Charles W. Steger attempted to cover up the university’s response. The state has called that claim false, saying Hall has produced no evidence to support his contention.

Steger is not named as a defendant, but he is scheduled to testify publicly under oath for the first time on his actions on the day of the shootings.

The lawsuits originally sought $10 million for the wrongful deaths of Pryde and Peterson, but the damages are now capped at $100,000 for each of their parents. The state is the lone defendant in the case, which has been scaled back from the lawsuit originally filed two years after the deadly shootings on Virginia Tech’s campus.

A state panel that investigated the shootings concluded that officials erred in not sending an alert earlier. The lag in issuing a campus warning also brought Virginia Tech a $55,000 fine from the U.S. Education Department. The school is appealing.

The Prydes and the Petersons were the only eligible families who didn’t accept their share of an $11 million state settlement.

___

Steve Szkotak can be reached on Twitter at http://twitter.com/sszkotakap.

More Steve Szkotak.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments are not enabled for this story.

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
Loaded terminology like "entitlements" and "welfare" skews the debate and alters America. How right-wingers use semantic tricks to kill government.
338 points339 points | 103 comments
vote
How right-wingers use semantic tricks to kill government -- "...much of the U.S. economic security support system consists of subsidies for the affluent in the form of tax breaks, like those for private retirement savings plans such as 401(k)s and private employer-provided health insurance."
62 points63 points | 3 comments
vote
Temple Grandin on DSM-5: “Sounds like diagnosis by committee.” When it comes to autism, Grandin argues we're paying too much attention to labels -- and not enough to individuals
34 points35 points | 3 comments
vote
Temple Grandin on DSM-5: “Sounds like diagnosis by committee.” When it comes to autism, Grandin argues we're paying too much attention to labels -- and not enough to individuals
35 points36 points | 2 comments
vote
With the help of Photoshop, artist Yao Lu has made shanshui — traditional ink paintings — of China's landfills
32 points33 points | 1 comment

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations