FeedsVirginia Tech student safe after shootings
A Plymouth High School graduate was among the thousands of shaken students calling home to relatives after 33 people were killed in two campus shootings Monday morning at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.
John Zaccone, a Canton native studying computer science at Virginia Tech, received a call from his mother, Lisa Zaccone, back in Michigan—at about the same time he was hearing about shootings on campus.
“I was in class when everything was going down,” said Zaccone, a freshman. “I walked out and I was waiting for the next class to begin out in the common area. Someone came in and was talking about how people were jumping out of the building. That’s when I checked what some of the news was saying.”
According to a statement from Charles W. Steger, president of the university, Virginia Tech police received the first call of a shooting in the West Ambler Johnston dormitory at about 7:15 a.m. Two hours later, another shooting took place at Norris Hall, on the opposite side of the 2,600-acre campus. Panicked students were reported jumping out of windows.
Zaccone said university officials told students to remain at the Chem-Phys building—which is on the same side of campus as Norris Hall—until noon, when they were allowed to go back to dorms or leave campus.
Many students spent the afternoon calling friends and family. Zaccone said he talked to his parents in Canton and his close friends on campus.
On Tuesday, police identified the shooter as student Cho Seung-Hui, a 23-year-old English major. The incident was the deadliest mass shooting in United States history.
Zaccone said students in his dorm were glued to TV sets as the number of reported fatalities rose from one to 20 to 33, including Cho. At least two dozen more people were said to be injured.
