Virginia Tech has its second shooting today, with an unidentified shooter killing one police officer and another, as yet unknown victim on campus. This, following the 2007Â Virginia Tech massacre that left 32 people dead and another 25 wounded.
Currently, the school is on lockdown. The shooter remains at large.
ABC News reports:
Virginia Tech spokesman Mark Owczarski said a campus police officer stopped a vehicle shortly after noon today in the school’s Coliseum parking lot, near McComas Hall.
“During the traffic stop. the officer was shot and killed. There were witnesses to this shooting,” Owczarski said in the statement.
“Witnesses reported to police the shooter fled on foot heading toward the Cage, a parking lot near Duck Pond Drive. At that parking lot, a second person was found. That person is also deceased,” he said.
Owczarski said there was a dragnet for the gunman.
VThe campus community should continue to shelter in place and visitors should not come to campus,” he said.
The school is saying that the suspect is a white male wearing a gray sweatpants, a gray hat with a neon green brim, a maroon hoodie and a backpack, according to the Associated Press.
ABC also notes, perhaps coincidentally,
On Wednesday, Virginia Tech officials appeared in court to attempt to block $55,000 in fines connected to the 2007 shooting, according to the Associated Press The Education Department claims that the school violated the law by waiting over two hours before notifying students via email that a students had been shot. The school argues that it acted appropriately and is being held to high standards that did not exist at the time of the shooting.
WTOL adds:
An emergency response team has been called in to the bottom floor of the student center, where students have been sequestered during the campus-wide lockdown. The campus newspaper has reported the gunman is still at large.
The nearby Montgomery County Schools also have been placed on lockdown.
“Shortly after 12 p.m. today, a Virginia Tech officer stopped a vehicle on campus during a routine traffic stop in the Coliseum parking lot near McComas hall. During the traffic stop, the officer was shot and killed,” according to a statement by Mark Owczarski, director of news and information at Virginia Tech.