Email Warning Came Two Hours After First Shooting

A delay of more than two hours in warning students between two spates of killings in America's deadliest campus shooting spree may have contributed to the size of the death toll.

The first shooting took place at 7.15am, followed by a second beginning around 9.15am - but the first email warning sent to students appears to have come after 9.20am, telling students that a shooting had taken place and merely asking them to report any suspicious behaviour.

It wasn't until later, at around 9.50am, that a further email, warning students that a gunman was on the loose on the campus and advising them to return to their rooms, was sent out, according to reports.

Shortly after 7.15am students at Virginia Tech's campus in the rural south-western part of the state were awakened by the scream of police sirens converging on West Ambler Johnston Hall, a dormitory housing 900 students.

Over two hours later - after some students say they had been given an all-clear - a further round of shooting broke out on the other side of the campus at another building, Norris Hall, with video footage taken by students showing police peppering the building with gunshots, as students waved frantically, guiding the police towards the shooter.

According to eyewitness reports, the shooter roamed from room to room within the building, with suggestions that he had chained the doors to the dormitory locked. Several students jumped from upper storey windows in attempts to flee the scene, described by some as "utter chaos".

Trey Perkins, a student at Virginia Tech, was in a classroom at Norris Hall with other students, who barricaded the door with their bodies to stop the gunman entering the room. "He started shooting at the door, for maybe four or five shots, but fortunately he didn't shoot anyone," he told Fox News.

David Jenkins, another student, said a friend was in the building at the time of the shooting: "He was very fortunate. He said every single person in the room was shot, killed and was in the ground. He laid on the ground with everyone ... he played dead and he was OK." He said the gunman then moved on to other classrooms.

The Roanoke Times newspaper reported that Gene Cole, a housekeeper at the university for more than 20 years, was on the second floor of Norris Hall and saw a person lying on a hallway floor. As Mr Cole approached, a man wearing a hat and holding a gun stepped into the hallway. "Someone stepped out of a classroom and started shooting at me," Mr Cole said. "All I saw was blood in the hallways." Mr Cole then escaped down the hallway.

The result was America's deadliest shooting spree, with the death toll surpassing the 15 murdered at the University of Texas in Austen in 1966, and the 12 killed by their classmates at Columbine high school in Colorado.

The Virginia Tech president, Charles Steger, said 33 people were dead, including the gunman, who killed himself. Some 26 people were wounded and were receiving treatment at nearby hospitals. Police said only one gunman was involved.

The long gap between the two deadly shootings - with at least one dead at West Ambler Johnston Hall and many more in Norris Hall - in terms of time and distance, raises serious questions about how the lone gunman was able to slip past police and students.

Students said the university only alerted them to the first shooting by email at 9.22am. Some described how they barricaded themselves in their rooms, surfing the internet looking for updated news.

"It's ridiculous. I was sitting in a classroom learning about heating glass, and in the next building people were being shot," said Jason Piatt, an engineering student at Virginia Tech.

The shootings took place on an unseasonably cold day, with flurries of snow swirling around the campus, which houses 26,000 students. Virginia Tech is known for its science and engineering courses. The campus is about 250 miles from Washington DC.

The southern corner of the state that houses the university is rural and sparsely populated, and is a bastion of hunting. Gun ownership is often regarded as a fiercely defended right.

The shooting was the second to hit the university this academic year. In August two people, including a policeman, were killed near the campus. William Morva, a convict who had escaped custody at the time, faces murder charges over the two killings. The university has also received several bomb threats in recent weeks.