By Jane Stancill and Tony Pugh
McClatchy Newspapers
Blacksburg, Va. (MCT) — Dazed and stricken, the Virginia Tech University community struggled Tuesday to come to grips with the murders of 32 friends and colleagues, as details emerged about the loner who unleashed terror on the idyllic campus.
Students fought back tears, walked quietly around the sprawling campus and greeted one another with hugs. Their classes canceled for the week, many packed their things to head for the security of home.
They checked Facebook.com, where they searched for news of who was safe and who was missing. They entered their names on group lists such as "I'm OK at VT."
Emotions were raw among the 10,000 who gathered in the basketball arena for a nationally televised midday memorial service. An overflow crowd packed the football stadium.
"Today, the world shares our sorrow," said Zenobia Hikes, the vice president of student affairs.
Outside, faculty members described the gunman — whom authorities identified as 23-year-old senior Cho Seung-Hui — as troubled, and students said they barely knew him.
Inside the service, President Bush symbolized the nation's anguish.
"It's impossible to make sense of such violence and suffering," Bush said in nine-minute remarks. "Those whose lives were taken did nothing to deserve their fate. They were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now they're gone, and they leave behind grieving families and grieving classmates and a grieving nation."
School officials advised that counselors would be available as long as they were needed, and cautioned that deeper emotional reactions might not appear for days or weeks.
At noon, the university's Corps of Cadets marched across the drill field to a slow, haunting drumbeat.
"I'm shaken," said Ammar Poonawala, an industrial-engineering junior.
"When it first happened it didn't sink in. But it struck me later, and I just broke down from the enormity of the tragedy."
In one bit of good news, medical authorities said all the wounded victims in area hospitals were recovering well and none remained in danger.
Cho, an English major and native of South Korea, came with his family to the U.S. in 1992 as a resident alien, according to Col. Steve Flaherty of the Virginia State Police.
He listed his home address as Centreville, Va., about 25 miles west of Washington.
Neighbor Marshall Main said he was taking out trash about 11 p.m. Monday when he saw six police cars, two unmarked, pull up in front of Cho's house. Two officers ran to the back of the home as others went to the front door. Shortly, he said, "a lot of people streamed out of the house in the dark."
Cho lived in Harper Hall, a campus dormitory near the site of Monday's first shooting.
Young-Hwan Kim, the president of the Korean Campus Crusade for Christ on campus, said his group had tried repeatedly to get Cho involved in its activities. Cho rebuffed the invitations and declined to provide contact information, said Kim, 24, a graduate student in civil engineering.
"No one knew him," Kim said. "We had no contact throughout four years. It's amazing. We could not reach out to him."
State police said Cho had legally purchased the two handguns found with his body, a Walther P22 and Glock 9 mm.
One of the weapons was used in both the initial shooting of two people at a dorm and the murders of 30 others in a classroom building.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
