Offices Locked Before Advisory

Officials at two Virginia Tech buildings locked down their offices after the first two shootings in last year’s massacre, before any general advisory went out to the campus.

The veterinary college locked down even as Tech’s top leaders debated warning students and staff and ruled out immediate action to secure the campus.

Tech’s continuing and professional education center, across Prices Fork Road from the campus, shut its doors even earlier.

The university leadership’s delay in issuing any warning after gunman Seung-Hui Cho’s first two killings that day has angered victims and families and was criticized by a state investigation last year.

The university has not previously disclosed the lockdowns at the veterinary college and professional education center but confirmed them last week in response to questions from the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

Officials at the veterinary college and professional education center locked their offices in response to police scanner traffic or phone calls from people who knew about the first two shootings, said Larry Hincker, a university spokesman.

Cho killed two students at West Ambler Johnston Hall at about 7:15 that morning. Two and a half hours later, he killed 30 students and professors in Norris Hall before killing himself.

“Apparently someone demonstrated leadership to ensure safety was priority number one, even though they received no official communication from the administration,“ said Michael Pohle, whose 23-year-old son Michael was killed in Norris Hall.

Hincker said the veterinary college locked down sometime between 9 and 9:10 that morning. University officials told the campus of the first shootings at 9:26 a.m. but did not say anyone had died or that the gunman was at large. The first alert that a gunman was at large came just a minute before Cho killed himself, having already killed 32.

The professional education center, just outside the campus on University City Boulevard, was locked down at 8 a.m. when one Tech professor dropped his wife off there on April 16. A colleague let her in and locked the door behind her. That colleague’s mother worked at West Ambler Johnston Hall and had called shortly before with news of the double shooting.

Unlike most of the other buildings on campus, people in the two buildings can lock themselves in, though their front doors are glass, Hincker said. Tech officials can lock down dormitories, too, but most buildings are opened and secured by the university’s locking crew.

Criticism of late warning came even before disclosures this year that raised questions about the reasons given for the delay.

In briefings this fall, police told victims and families that assurances the gunman in the first two shootings was off campus came later than the state investigation reported. That incorrect assumption was a key reason why officials did not act sooner to warn the campus, the investigation concluded.

E-mails compiled for families and victims released this summer showed a senior safety and security official locked her office shortly before Tech’s leaders issued the first, vague advisory about the West Ambler Johnston shootings.

Records reviewed by The Times-Dispatch this year showed Montgomery County officials locked down schools in Blacksburg after school resource officers were called to the scene of the first two shootings. That was more than half an hour before the first advisory.

Two Tech officials at the Policy Group meeting — the assembly of top leaders who gathered to deal with the crisis — told their children about the first shootings before the general advisory went out, those officials later told victims and families. But Hincker said neither told their children to do anything different that morning and described them as support staff for the group.