So much for their initial lockdown of Ambler Hall

The first shooting happened at 7:15am, yet students were getting to leave the building at 7:45 am.


http://collegemedia.com/

Tuesday, April 17th 2007 7:58PM
Students state lockdown occurred late morning

Students have stated that Ambler-Johnston Hall was not on lockdown until as late as 10 a.m. yesterday morning.

Meredith Hawkins, a sixth floor West Ambler-Johnston resident described how the halls weren't under firm security measures until after the second shooting had occurred. "My roommate left for class at 7:45," Hawkins said, "and she left the dorm as if nothing had happened."

"Nothing seemed out of the ordinary at all." Hawkins said.

"The first word of any lockdown didn't happen until around 9:45 or so," Hawkins said. "But they were allowing people to leave, but if you did leave you weren't allowed back in."

"It was around 10 or so, maybe even later, that they stopped letting people leaving entirely, but before then, you could just go as you please." Hawkins said.

Joann Cassano, a sophomore 4th floor West Ambler-Johnston resident, confirmed the same description of the supposed lockdown of the building.
"Us 4th floor people were allowed to leave around 9:10," Cassano said.

Isn't that unlawful imprisonment?

Especially if the person who did the shooting is gone MIA from the murder scene. Seems like NO one should have been allowed to leave, at least not within 30 minutes of the murder itself.

when he went and signed the PATRIOT act.

"Seems like NO one should have been allowed to leave, at least not within 30 minutes of the murder itself."

Maybe if the dorm happened to be a creepy manor out on the moors during a dark and stormy night. But I'd imagine the shooter would have already left long before the police ever showed up.

The point of a "lockdown," Rainbow, is to keep a crazed gunman who's on the outside of the building from getting in. It's not supposed to keep the guy on the inside from getting out.

It is the Universities responsibility to ensure that the students are safe....If there is a roaming gunman on campus...lockdown is the only logical solution.

If it were say an office building of any sort the police have been known to lockdown the facility until they have the situation under control and all suspects identified.

How do you lock down 2000+ acres with 26,000 students in multiple buildings?

It's not possible. It's not like containing a single building by locking several doors.

One of my friends didn't get hold of one of her sons until 2PM yesterday. He lives off campus, didn't have a class until later and his cell phone was dead. He could have walked right into a slaughterhouse, but thank God he didn't.

Loyola is trying out a text message emergency system that Tech had been looking into several months ago, but again, how many professors require that cell phones be off in class? How many kids silence their phones in class?

I wish I had the answer to this, but I'm at a loss. I don't think the University acted irresponsibly and neither do the kids I know who attend Tech. (and I live in VA, it's a lot)

I am a Project Manager by trade...I eventually want to move intodisaster planning and mitigation planning....

If the US can plan (well excluding the current administration) to protect the entire country...we can definitely do a better job planning and protecting our Universities etc....

Mitigation plans have to address likely and least likely scenarios and how they are addressed...they may be hypotheticals but at least they are thought out plans...

I agree the Communication systems on campuses must be improved to communicate with students, parents and faculty...The plan has to be multi-faceted....

this type of thing and I don't mean you at all.

This is a common sense thing. Think it through. Decide what makes sense. How to reach the greatest number in the smallest amount of time.

I think the powers that be that are 'looking into it' don't know the first thing about it, but that certainly wouldn't be the first time that I thought I could run circles around their logic.

but their is a science behind it as well...

I think that states, cities, campuses have to come together and come up with an overall strategical plan....the campuses for example cannot do it without working with local Fire and Police departments, police have to have a common yet specific way to react to these events....and so on...

At this point anyone could run circles around the powers that be...

it was just the building that was a crime scene. The hotel across from my house had someone stabbed in their parking lot last summer. I was driving by it right after it happened and the entire area around the hotel/parking lot/field was blockaded off with that yellow crime tape.

If the students who were leaving that building (within 30 minutes of the murders) are saying they couldn't even tell that something happened there obviously there was no such thing done. Everyone in that dorm should have been told to stay put, building exits covered by campus law enforcements and people questioned and warned as they were trying to leave. One would think if a double murder just happened in the building there would have been a little more hoopla as a student tried to leave. We should be hearing stories from kids who tried to leave so soon after the murders that they were stopped by officers, etc...not that they just walked out and everything seemed like a normal day. Why was the building not surrounded with VT police cars, ambulances, etc?? Sounds like they were trying to take the "low key" approach.

VT officials dropped the ball right there with that contained crime scene and they know it. And have they ever explained why they thought (as they had said publically on Monday) the dorm shooter "had left campus and probably the **state**"? I'd like to know the officials name who initially uttered those words and find out what evidence he found to believe that. Someone on another website compared it to the fool who told the WTC building workers to "go back to your desk, everything is fine".

They were talking to a "person of interest" they had detained when the murders in the engineering building started to take place.