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Students cope with the loss at two-hour convocation

BY MELANIE LEFKOWITZ | melanie.lefkowitz@newsday.com

12:34 AM EDT, April 18, 2007

Clad in their school colors of orange and maroon, they streamed into a memorial service by the thousands -- so many of them that their long moment of silence was almost audible.

The president and first lady came and went; the TV cameras and reporters were still everywhere. News about the victims, the killer and the investigation ranged from the horrifying to the heartbreaking. And across the country, other campuses went on lockdown amid fears of a copycat event.

The day after 32 students and professors were slain in the largest school shooting massacre in American history, things were a long way from back to normal.

"It's impossible to make sense of such violence and suffering. Those whose lives were taken did nothing to deserve their fate. They were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time," President George Bush said Tuesday, at a two-hour convocation at Virginia Tech.

"And on this terrible day of mourning, it's hard to imagine that a time will come when life at Virginia Tech will return to normal. But such a day will come. And when it does, you will always remember the friends and teachers who were lost Tuesday, and the time you shared with them, and the lives they hoped to lead."

Meanwhile, details about the terrifying moments before the shooting spree emerged as investigators pored through a crime scene that was, by all accounts, gruesome and chaotic.

Victims and personal belongings were strewn around four classrooms and a stairwell, said Virginia State Police Superintendent Col. Steve Flaherty, and according to court papers, a bomb-threat note was found nearby. Two people were injured jumping out of windows. An emergency room doctor at Montgomery Regional Hospital, where many of the victims were taken, said the extent of the injuries lay bare the violence of the attack.

"This man was brutal," said Dr. Joseph Cacioppo. "There wasn't a shooting victim that didn't have less than three bullet wounds in him."

Investigators said one of the two weapons found was used for both the dormitory shooting that killed two and the deadlier classroom shootout that had a toll of 31, including suspected gunman Cho Seung-Hui. A Glock and a 9-mm handgun were both found near the bodies in Norris Hall. Police stopped short of confirming that Cho, 23, committed both sets of killings, however.

Receipts in his backpack led detectives to Roanoke Firearms, where owner John Markell said his shop sold a Glock and a box of practice ammo to Cho 36 days ago for $571.

University officials were also investigating whether Cho was behind two bomb threats received in recent weeks -- one on Friday, and one earlier this month, a school spokeswoman said.

Around the school's sprawling Blacksburg, Va., campus, online and across the country, memorials virtual and actual continued to crop up. Bush -- who ordered flags to fly at half-staff through Sunday -- paused at a campus memorial of flowers and candles, and he and first lady Laura Bush added their signatures to a five-foot display of the school's initials.

Students and school administrators around the nation were jittery Tuesday, with scares sparking evacuations and lock-downs at universities in Texas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, North Dakota, South Dakota and Michigan, and two public schools in Louisiana. At Virginia Tech, classes were canceled for the remainder of the week and thousands of shaken students were hurriedly leaving town.

Officials at Virginia Tech continued to endure bitter criticisms that they had failed to do enough to warn students about a gunman and should have locked down the campus immediately. Nonetheless, university President Charles Steger received a 30-second standing ovation at Tuesday afternoon's memorial service, saying he hoped "to awaken from this horrible nightmare."

"In such times as this, we look for sources of strength to sustain us," Bush said at the memorial, which ended with a surprising -- and inspiring -- school spirit chant. "And in this moment of loss, you're finding these sources everywhere around you."

This story was supplemented with Associated Press reports.