Virginia Tech was in shock Friday after a school police officer and another person were shot dead in a chaotic scene on the campus where the deadliest school shooting in US history unfolded in 2007. Police refused to confirm reports that the second fatality might have been the shooter himself, as the 31,000-student university lifted an afternoon-long lockdown and declared there was no longer an “active threat” late Thursday. But when asked if the gunman was at large, Virginia State Police spokesman Bob Carpentieri cryptically told reporters: “Investigators feel confident that they have located the person.”
Slain police officer Deriek Crouse, 39, a four-year veteran of Virginia Tech’s own security force, was shot and killed during a noon-hour “routine traffic stop” in a parking lot near a sports facility. “Tragedy again struck Virginia Tech in a wanton act of violence where our police officer, Deriek Crouse, was murdered during a routine traffic stop.” Virginia Tech was the scene of the deadliest shooting incident by a single gunman in US history in April 2007, when an English major, Seung-Hui Cho, 23, killed 32 people before taking his own life. Twenty-five others were wounded.
