Victims 'in the wrong place at the wrong time'

COMBINED DISPATCHES
Dazed and stricken, the Virginia Tech 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 bucolic campus.
Students fought back tears, walked quietly around the sprawling campus and greeted one another with hugs.
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.
Inside the service, President Bush told Virginia Tech students and teachers that the nation was praying for them and "there's a power in these prayers."
"It's impossible to make sense of such violence and suffering," Bush said at a memorial service on the campus where 33 people, including the gunman, died in shootings the day before.
"Those whose lives were taken did nothing to deserve their fate," the president said. "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."
The memorial service was subdued, but ended with a spontaneous school chant of "Let's go, Hokies!"
Shooter bought gunin Roanoke 5 weeks ago
Virginia Tech senior Cho Seung-Hui walked into a Roanoke gun shop five weeks ago, put down a credit card and walked out with a Glock 19 handgun and a box of ammunition. He paid 571.
The Glock was one of two guns found with Cho's fingerprints after he fatally shot his fellow students and then himself at the university in the deadliest shooting rampage in modern U.S. history.
Roanoke Firearms owner John Markell said his shop sold the Glock to Cho in March. The serial number had been scratched off, but federal agents traced it to the store using a receipt found in Cho's backpack. "To find out the gun came from my shop is just terrible," Markell said.
Authorities also found a Walther .22-caliber handgun in Cho's possession, according to a search warrant filed in Montgomery County.
Stricter gun controlnot the answer, Reid says
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid cautioned Tuesday against a "rush to judgment" on stricter gun control.
A leading House supporter of restrictions on firearms conceded passage of legislation would be difficult.
"I think we ought to be thinking about the families and the victims and not speculate about future legislative battles that might lie ahead," said Reid, a view expressed by other Democratic leaders.
A few Democrats renewed the call for gun control legislation, and more are expected to join them.
Student made tourniquetfrom electrical cord
The image hinted at the horror that unfolded: a Virginia Tech student, sprawled and bloody, in the arms of others who struggled to carry him to safety.
The near-death ordeal of senior Kevin Sterne, captured in that photograph that played on newspaper front pages across the country, also reflects the resiliency and hope emerging from the nation's deadliest campus shooting rampage.
Sterne was among the dozens of students shot in Norris Hall classrooms Monday.
He was in stable condition Tuesday, and doctors credited his quick thinking.
Doctors said Sterne is a former Eagle Scout who kept enough cool to fashion a tourniquet from an electrical cord after a bullet tore an inch-long gash through the femoral artery of his right leg.
"The patient that I took care of was an incredible guy," said Dr. David Stoeckle, chief of surgery at Montgomery Regional Hospital. "He was bleeding significantly ... he knew he was bleeding to death."
Emergency workers later applied a second tourniquet to the leg before racing him to the hospital for immediate surgery, Stoeckle said. The surgeon did not identify Sterne by name, but his parents told reporters Tuesday their 6-foot-2 son was the student in the photograph.
Eight states affectedby threats of violence
Campus threats forced lock-downs and evacuations at universities and grade schools in seven states Tuesday. One threat in Louisiana directly mentioned the massacre in Virginia, while others were reports of suspicious activity in Texas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, North Dakota, South Dakota, Arizona and Michigan.
In Louisiana, parents picked up hundreds of students from Bogalusa's high school and middle school amid reports that a man had been arrested Tuesday morning after threatening a mass killing in a note that alluded to the murders at Virginia Tech.
Parents rush to campusto console students
Hundreds of emotional parent and child reunions were on display across the grieving Virginia Tech campus Tuesday, as moms and dads descended on Blacksburg to console -- and in some cases, retrieve -- sons and daughters.
Tom and Cathy Ritter drove more than four hours to Virginia Tech from their home in Reisterstown, Md., to be with their two sons, a senior and a freshman.
For the Ritters, it was a relief to know their children were all right. But seeing them was important even after they'd gotten text messages and phone calls telling them their sons weren't hurt.
Even parents of children who escaped unscathed physically worried about the emotional toll the horrific day might take.
"We just want to try to help him get through it in any way they suggest," said Brenda Koonce, who drove from Charlottesville, Va., with her husband, Ed, to aid their 19-year-old son Jeffrey, a freshman.
After Tuesday's convocation, many students could be seen pulling overstuffed luggage down sidewalks and putting it into trunks of vehicles. With classes canceled this week, some decided to head home. For others, staying felt like a necessary part of the healing process.