Va. Tech president to testify about '07 massacre

[March 09, 2012]  CHRISTIANSBURG, Va. (AP) -- Virginia Tech's president was set to testify Friday in a civil trial seeking official accountability for the slaying of 32 on the Tech campus on April 16, 2007.

Charles Steger was expected to be among the final witnesses called by attorneys for the parents of two Virginia Tech students killed in the campus rampage, the most deadly mass shooting in modern U.S. history. The wrongful death lawsuit claims Virginia Tech officials delayed alerting the campus to the first two slayings on the campus, allowing student gunman Seung-Hui Cho to continue his killing rampage before killing himself.

Attorneys for the parents of Julia K. Pryde and Erin N. Peterson claim their daughters and others might have survived if the university had warned the campus earlier of the first slayings.

The state, the defendant in the case, maintains officials believed the first two killings in a dormitory were domestic and did not pose a wider threat to the 36,000 students, faculty and other employees on the 2,000-acre campus.

They have said university officials acted on the best information available that morning.

Steger was among the university officials who gathered on campus on the morning of the shootings after two students were found shot in West Ambler Johnston Hall. One was dead and the other was mortally wounded.

The shootings occurred shortly after 7 a.m. but no campus-wide alert was issued until 9:26 a.m. An email only stated a "shooting incident" had occurred but did not mention the gunman remained at large. It urged students to "be cautious" but did not recommend any other action.

After shots rang out on campus at 9:42 a.m., officials issued a more ominous alert: "A gunman is loose on campus. Stay in buildings until further notice. Stay away from all windows."

But by then, Cho had chained the doors at Norris Hall and killed 30 students and faculty in the classroom building. He then killed himself.

The attorneys for the two families presented police witnesses who testified that they concluded early in their investigation of the dorm shootings that the victims were likely killed by a jealous boyfriend. They sought the boyfriend of one of the victims as a "person of interest" but concluded about the time of the Norris killings that he was not the shooter.

The trial has presented Virginia Tech officials who told of the anguished hours between the first shootings and the Norris carnage. They heeded the counsel of police who were convinced the dorm shootings were isolated and targeted and that the larger campus community was not threatened.

University officials said they did not want to reveal the full circumstances of the first shootings until the victims' parents could be notified and to avoid a campus panic.

The plaintiffs' attorneys said the university had previously issued campus alerts for lesser events, such as bomb threats.

The Prydes and the Petersons are seeking $100,000 each and a full official accounting of events that day.

A jury of seven in the civil trial will weigh the arguments under a lower standard of proof than a criminal trial.

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

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.

[Associated Press; By STEVE SZKOTAK]

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

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