At least 32 (plus gunmen) dead in Virginia Tech Shooting

[Guest ONYX]

[quote name='Jamie_B' post='473919' date='Apr 17 2007, 11:33 PM']The snarky part of mine asked today "If this happened in New Orlands would the president have been there the next day?"[/quote]

[color="#FF0000"][b]The snarky part of my soul asks, "Should I make fun of the way Jamie spelled New Orleans?" But I resist temptation because he is my friend.[/b][/color]

[Guest A-Men-HouseofPain]

[quote name='sneaky' post='473939' date='Apr 18 2007, 12:11 AM'][color="#FF0000"][b]The snarky part of my soul asks, "Should I make fun of the way Jamie spelled New Orleans?" But I resist temptation because he is my friend.[/b][/color]

[/quote]
[img]http://forum.go-bengals.com/public/style_emoticons//24.gif[/img] i was thinking the same thing.

[Nati Ice]

[url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appalachian_School_of_Law_shooting"]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appalachian_S...of_Law_shooting[/url]

[Guest BlackJesus]

[font="Arial Narrow"][size=3][b]I also feel sorry for Cho's parents.


From what I have heard/read = they are hardworking immigrants who worked 18 hour days in a dry cleaner to put one daughter through Princeton and send little Psycho fucker to Va Tech.


It probably isn't there fault that there son ended up being such a pathetic narcissistic loser who couldn't even get a dog to play with him if he was wearing a pork chop sweater. [img]http://forum.go-bengals.com/public/style_emoticons//23.gif[/img]


This little self absorbed shit couldn't deal with the fact that people didn't like him = because he was fucking creepy and had nothing to offer as an individual (other than good aim it seems). So to make himself feel better he created this "reality" where everyone else was a debaucherous "rich kid" ... and he was a self-righteous saint = Ironically one who likes to shoot random people.


Then again I would suggest to the parents that they probably move to Canada for their own safety.[/b][/size][/font]

[Nati Ice]

fuck that, his parents raised a psycho fuck that went on a killing spree that resulted in 33 deaths including his own. i have absolutely zero sympathy for the parents who raised this moron.

[Guest BlackJesus]

[quote name='Nati Ice' post='473962' date='Apr 18 2007, 12:38 AM']fuck that, his parents raised a psycho fuck that went on a killing spree that resulted in 33 deaths including his own. i have absolutely zero sympathy for the parents who raised this moron.[/quote]


[font="Arial Narrow"][size=3][b]I guess it depends on how much you believe they were at fault.

It wasn't like he was making bombs in the basement while the parents ignored him upstairs.


The guy was 23 years old ... a senior in college ... lived outside of the home ... and since the parents worked virtually all hours they weren't sleeping when he was younger - they probably saw him as an odd quiet kid (as millions are) and not a potential mass murderer.


Also many mental illnesses like schizophrenia and mental delusions really come into play in someone’s early 20's ... and it wouldn't surprise me if Cho ends up being one of these cases. [/b][/size][/font]

[|Montana Bengal|]

[quote name='BlackJesus' post='473559' date='Apr 17 2007, 11:20 AM'][font="Arial Narrow"][size=3][b]Also this is the same week that the Columbine shooting happened. That shooting was on the 20th which would have been friday.[/b][/size][/font] [img]http://forum.go-bengals.com/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/23.gif[/img][/quote]

"April is the cruellest month..." ~T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland

Seems like there was another recent one in April...
Colombine April 20th, 1999
Oklahoma City Bombing April 19, 1995
Waco April 19, 1993

And a random one
Titatic Sank April 15, 1912

[Guest BengalBacker]

[quote name='BlackJesus' post='473692' date='Apr 17 2007, 04:47 PM'][color="#000080"][font="Arial Narrow"][size=3][b]This whole situation really just makes the inside of my heart hurt.

So senseless in its nature.
CNN just had an interview with a father of one of the victims who was a very attractive Lebanese girl who was a dancer and I couldn't even imagine being that father (I have no children) but I can't even fathom how much that loss would hurt.

I guess in the back of my mind I hope the kid was truly mentally ill ... because I shudder to think that someone could just be that evil to have done this (I know that there are people this evil, I just like some of the illusion that they are rare). [/b][/size][/font][/color][/quote]


Well said.

A part of me hates this fucker with all my heart, but another part of me realizes that mental illness is real, and it's a motherfucker.

[|Bengal Migration|]

[quote name='Homer_Rice' post='473913' date='Apr 18 2007, 04:14 AM']You know, the snarky part of my soul is asking: "What's the big deal? If Blacksburg were Baghdad, it'd be just another day."[/quote]
x2

[quote name='Jamie_B' post='473919' date='Apr 18 2007, 04:33 AM']The snarky part of mine asked today "If this happened in New Orlands would the president have been there the next day?"[/quote]
x2

[quote name='BlackJesus' post='473922' date='Apr 18 2007, 04:36 AM'][font="Arial Narrow"][size=3][b]I have been fighting that urge as well ...
Not to mention the fact that if it was 32,000 people and in Africa .... = would it even outdraw Britney Spears shaving her head again in the media [img]http://forum.go-bengals.com/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/23.gif[/img] [/b][/size][/font][/quote]

x2
[quote name='BengalBacker' post='473981' date='Apr 18 2007, 09:07 AM']Well said.

A part of me hates this fucker with all my heart, but another part of me realizes that mental illness is real, and it's a motherfucker.[/quote]

x2

One thing I have been shocked to see, is that this story has the been the top headline on BBC News, SkyNews, etc, over here in the UK. While I think it is tragic news, I have no understanding of how it is the top story in the country.

[Guest BlackJesus]

[center][img]http://forum.go-bengals.com/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/23.gif[/img][/center]


[quote]Screenplays purportedly written by Cho alarmed some of his classmates.

[b]"When we read Cho's plays, it was like something out of a nightmare," [/b] said former classmate Ian MacFarlane, in a blog entry quoted by AP. "The plays had really twisted, macabre violence that used weapons I wouldn't have even thought of." MacFarlane added that [b]he and other students worried "... about whether he could be a school shooter."[/b][/quote]


[url="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9618705"]http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9618705[/url]

[Jamie_B]

[quote name='ONYX' post='473939' date='Apr 18 2007, 12:11 AM'][color="#FF0000"][b]The snarky part of my soul asks, "Should I make fun of the way Jamie spelled New Orleans?" But I resist temptation because he is my friend.[/b][/color]

[/quote]

[Guest ONYX]

[quote name='Jamie_B' post='474018' date='Apr 18 2007, 08:38 AM'][/quote]




[img]http://forum.go-bengals.com/public/style_emoticons//6.gif[/img]

[Homer_Rice]

[quote name='WhoDeyUK' post='473990' date='Apr 18 2007, 06:38 AM']One thing I have been shocked to see, is that this story has the been the top headline on BBC News, SkyNews, etc, over here in the UK. While I think it is tragic news, I have no understanding of how it is the top story in the country.[/quote]

Here is my hypothesis. We are blessed and privileged to be in parts of the world that tend to be insulated from the more "raw" facts of life. When we are reminded of that in an oblique way, as this incident does, then we pull our hair and wring our hands, all the while trying to forget something we know deep in our hearts: our sense of entitlement is based as much on fortune and chance (at least as individuals who cannot decide where to be born) as hard work. And, in cases where the "hard work" has been mostly done by one's forebears, then it's easier to wail than it is to address the proper question--what has my generation done for the world? The media is just a more sophisticated form of the professional grievers one used to hire in ancient cultures.

[Guest BlackJesus]

[center][img]http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thenewswire/archive/ap/faces1.jpg[/img][/center]


[size=4][u][quote][b]A Look at Some Virginia Tech Victims[/b]
STEPHEN MANNING
April 17, 2007
AP [/u][/size]




CENTREVILLE, Va. — [b][size=4]Reema Samaha[/size][/b] was a dancer, whether it was the classical ballet she studied as a child, the belly dance moves she used for a high school talent show or the spinning she did around the living room with her mother.

"She just danced and laughed and smiled," said Linda D'Orazio, a neighbor in suburban Washington.

On Monday, Samaha was shot and killed at Virginia Tech while sitting in French class. She was one of 32 people killed by 23-year-old Cho Seung-Hui, an English major who went to the same high school as her.

[b]Samaha, 18, was a member of the high school's dance team and had recently taken up belly dancing, a nod to her family's roots in Lebanon[/b], where the Samahas visited each summer.

[b]"She was just beautiful and when you watched her, I thought she was one of the most gorgeous girls in the world, inside and out," said Lauren Walters[/b], a former classmate of Samaha's who now attends Clemson University.

Samaha and Cho both graduated from Westfield High School in Chantilly _ Samaha in 2006 and Cho in 2003. But Samaha's neighbors and friends said they did not think she knew Cho.

Samaha's house in the neighborhood of tidy two-story homes is only about a mile from the town house where Cho lived with his parents.

On Tuesday, Samaha's parents were in Blacksburg as stunned neighbors stocked the family's kitchen with food, trickling in and out of the home.

A large photo of Samaha, a striking woman with long dark hair, sat in the living room next to pictures of her older brother and sister.

"It's a random act of violence. We can't understand how she just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time," said Lu Ann McNabb, whose children grew up across the street from the Samaha family.

The neighborhood kids used to make home videos in their back yards, often mimicking their parents. McNabb said the parents would sometimes watch the videos when their families got together to play games twice each year.

"We would laugh our heads off," she said.



[i][size=4]A look at some of the other victims killed in the Virginia Tech massacre:[/size][/i]


___


[size=4][b]Ross Abdallah Alameddine[/b][/size]

Alameddine, 20, of Saugus, Mass., was a sophomore who had just declared English as his major.

Friends created a memorial page on Facebook.com that described Alameddine as "an intelligent, funny, easygoing guy."

"You're such an amazing kid, Ross," wrote Zach Allen, who along with Alameddine attended Austin Preparatory School in Reading, Mass. "You always made me smile, and you always knew the right thing to do or say to cheer anyone up."

Alameddine was killed in the classroom building, according to Robert Palumbo, a family friend who answered the phone at the Alameddine residence Tuesday.

Alameddine's mother, Lynnette Alameddine said she was outraged by how victims' relatives were notified of the shooting.

[b]"It happened in the morning and I did not hear (about her son's death) until a quarter to 11 at night," [/b]she said. "That was outrageous. Two kids died, and then they shoot a whole bunch of them, including my son."


___


[size=4][b]Christopher James Bishop[/b][/size]

Bishop, 35, taught German at Virginia Tech and helped oversee an exchange program with a German university.

Bishop decided which German-language students at Virginia Tech could attend the Darmstadt Technology University to improve their German.

"He would teach them German in Blacksburg, and he would decide which students were able to study" abroad, Darmstadt spokesman Lars Rosumek said.

The school set up a book of condolences for students, staff and faculty to sign, along with information about the Virginia shootings.

"Of course many persons knew him personally and are deeply, deeply shocked about his death," Rosumek said.

Bishop earned bachelor's and master's degrees in German and was a Fulbright scholar at Christian-Albrechts University in Kiel, Germany.

According to his Web site, [b]Bishop spent four years living in Germany, where he "spent most of his time learning the language, teaching English, drinking large quantities of wheat beer, and wooing a certain fraulein."[/b]

The "fraulein" was Bishop's wife, Stephanie Hofer, who also teaches in Virginia Tech's German program.


Bishop's personal Web site: [url="http://www.memory39.com"]http://www.memory39.com[/url]


___


[size=4][b]Ryan Clark[/b][/size]

[b]Clark was called "Stack" by his friends,[/b] many of whom he met as a resident assistant at Ambler Johnson Hall, where the first shootings took place.

Clark, 22, was from Martinez, Ga., just outside Augusta. He was a fifth-year student working toward degrees in biology and English, and a [b]member of the Marching Virginians band.[/b]

[b]"He was just one of the greatest people you could possibly know,"[/b] friend Gregory Walton, 25, said after learning from an ambulance driver that Clark was among the dead.

"He was always smiling, always laughing. [b]I don't think I ever saw him mad in the five years I knew him."[/b]


___


[size=4][b]Jocelyne Couture-Nowak[/b][/size]

Couture-Nowak, a French instructor at Virginia Tech, was instrumental in the creation of the first French school in a town in Nova Scotia.

She lived there in the 1990s with her husband, Jerzy Nowak, the head of the horticulture department at Virginia Tech.

Richard Landry, a spokesman with the francophone school board in Truro, Nova Scotia, said Couture-Nowak was one of three mothers who pushed for the founding of the Ecole acadienne de Truro in 1997.

"It was very important for her daughters to be taught in French," said Rejean Sirois, who worked with her in establishing the school.

A student who identified herself as DeAnne Leigh Pelchat described her gratitude to Couture-Nowak on a Web site.

[b]"I will forever remember you and what you have done for me and the others that benefit from what you did in the little town of Truro,"[/b] Pelchat wrote in French. "You'll always have a place in my heart."


___


[size=4][b]Daniel Perez Cueva[/b][/size]

Perez Cueva, 21, from Peru, was killed while in a French class, said his mother, Betty Cueva, who was reached by telephone at the youth's listed telephone number.

Perez Cueva was a student of international relations, according to the Virginia Tech Web site.

[b]His father, Flavio Perez, spoke of the death earlier to RPP radio in Peru. He lives in Peru and said he was trying to obtain a humanitarian visa from the U.S. consulate here.[/b] He is separated from Cueva, who said she had lived in the United States for six years.

A spokesman at the U.S. Embassy in Lima said the student's father "will receive all the attention possible when he applies" for the visa.


___


[size=4][b]Kevin Granata[/b][/size]

Granata, a professor of engineering science and mechanics, served in the military and later conducted orthopedic research in hospitals before coming to Virginia Tech, where he and his students researched muscle and reflex response and robotics.

The head of the school's engineering science and mechanics department called Granata one of the top five biomechanics researchers in the country working on movement dynamics in cerebral palsy.

"With so many research projects and graduate students, he still found time to spend with his family, and he coached his children in many sports and extracurricular activities," said engineering professor Demetri P. Telionis. [b] "He was a wonderful family man. We will all miss him dearly."[/b]

[b]Granata was known worldwide for his research into how muscles accomplish complicated movements, [/b]said Stefan Duma, another engineering professor.

"He liked to ask the big questions," Duma said. "When we had students defending their Ph.D., and he kept asking, 'Did we have the total solution?' [b]He was really interested in whether we answered the big questions. That's really a sign of a great scientist."[/b]


___


[size=4][b]Caitlin Hammaren[/b][/size]

Hammaren, 19, of Westtown, N.Y., was a sophomore majoring in international studies and French, according to officials at her former school district.

[b]"She was just one of the most outstanding young individuals that I've had the privilege of working with in my 31 years as an educator,"[/b] said John P. Latini, principal of Minisink Valley High School, where she graduated in 2005. "Caitlin was a leader among our students."

Minisink Valley students and teachers shared their grief Tuesday at a counseling center set up in the school, Latini said.


_____


[size=4][b]Jeremy Herbstritt[/b][/size]

Herbstritt loved to chat, so much so that [b]high school classmates voted him "Most Talkative."[/b]

[b]"Talkie, talkie, talkie, everybody likes to talk,"[/b] read the description in the Bellefonte High School yearbook of the 1998 graduate. Below was a picture of Herbstritt, with a sly grin, talking on a pay phone.

Herbstritt, 27, had two undergraduate degrees from Penn State, one in biochemistry and molecular biology from 2003, and another in civil engineering from 2006.

[b]He grew up on a small farm just outside the central Pennsylvania borough of Bellefonte, where his father, Michael, raised steer and sheep.[/b]

His career goal was to be a civil engineer, and he talked of getting into environmental work after school.

"He liked to work on machinery, take a lot of stuff apart and fixed it," said the victim's grandfather Thomas Herbstritt, 77, of St. Marys. "He was a studious kid."


___


[size=4][b]Rachael Hill[/b][/size]

Hill was a freshman studying biology at Virginia Tech after graduating from Grove Avenue Christian School in Henrico County.

[b]Hill, an only child, was popular and funny, had a penchant for shoes, and was competitive on the volleyball court.[/b]

"Rachael was a very bright, articulate, intelligent, beautiful, confident, poised young woman. She had a tremendous future in front of her," said Clay Fogler, administrator for the Grove Avenue school. "Obviously, the Lord had other plans for her."

Her father, Guy Hill, said the family was too distraught to talk about Hill on Tuesday, but relatives were planning to have memorial events later in the week. "We just need some time here," he said tearfully.


___


[size=4][b]Emily Jane Hilscher[/b][/size]

Hilscher, a freshman majoring in animal and poultry sciences, was known around her hometown as an animal lover.

[b]"She worked at a veterinarian's office and cared about them her whole life,"[/b] said Rappahannock County Administrator John W. McCarthy, a family friend.

Hilscher, 19, of Woodville, was a freshman majoring in animal and poultry sciences. She lived on the same dorm floor as victim Ryan Clark, McCarthy said.

A friend, Will Nachless, also 19, said Hilscher "was always very friendly. Before I even knew her, I thought she was very outgoing, friendly and helpful, and she was great in chemistry."


___


[size=4][b]Jarrett Lee Lane[/b][/size]

Lane, 22, was a senior civil engineering student who was valedictorian of his high school class in tiny Narrows, Va., just 30 miles from Virginia Tech.

His high school put up a memorial to Lane that included pictures, musical instruments and his athletic jerseys.

[b]Lane played the trombone, ran track, and played football and basketball at Narrows High School. "We're just kind of binding together as a family,"[/b] Principal Robert Stump said.

Lane's brother-in-law Daniel Farrell called Lane fun-loving and "full of spirit."

"He had a caring heart and was a friend to everyone he met," Farrell said. "We are leaning on God's grace in these trying hours."


___


[size=4][b]Matthew J. La Porte[/b][/size]

La Porte, 20, a freshman from Dumont, N.J., was attending Virginia Tech on an Air Force ROTC scholarship and belonged to the school's Corps of Cadets.

La Porte, who was considering majoring in political science, was a gradate of the Carson Long Military Institute in New Bloomfield, Pa. He credited the academy with turning his life around.

"I know that Carson Long was my second chance," he said during a 2005 graduation speech that was printed in the school yearbook.

On Tuesday, the school posted a memorial photograph of La Porte in his school uniform on its Web site.

[b]"Matthew was an exemplary student at Carson Long whose love of music and fellow cadets were an inspiration to all on campus,"[/b] the school said in a statement.

According to his profile on a music Web site, [b]La Porte's favorite artists were Meshuggah, Metallica, Soundgarden, Creed and Live.[/b]


___


[size=4][b]Liviu Librescu[/b][/size]

Librescu, an Israeli engineering and math lecturer, was known for his research, but his son said [b]the Holocaust survivor will be remembered as a hero for protecting students as the gunman tried to enter his classroom.[/b]

Librescu taught at Virginia Tech for 20 years and had an international reputation for his work in aeronautical engineering.

"His research has enabled better aircraft, superior composite materials, and more robust aerospace structures," said Ishwar K. Puri, the head of the engineering science and mechanics department.

After surviving the Nazi killings, Librescu escaped from Communist Romania and made his way to the United States before he was killed in Monday's massacre, which coincided with Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Librescu's son, Joe, said his father's students sent e-mails detailing how the professor saved their lives by blocking the doorway of his classroom from the approaching gunman before Librescu was fatally shot.

"My father blocked the doorway with his body and asked the students to flee," Librescu's son, Joe Librescu, said Tuesday in a telephone interview from his home outside of Tel Aviv. "Students started opening windows and jumping out."


___


[size=4][b]G.V. Loganathan[/b][/size]

Loganathan was born in the southern Indian city of Chennai and had been a civil and environmental engineering professor at Virginia Tech since 1982.

Loganathan, 51, [b]won several awards for excellence in teaching, had served on the faculty senate and was an adviser to about 75 undergraduate students.[/b]

"We all feel like we have had an electric shock. We do not know what to do," his brother G.V. Palanivel told the NDTV news channel from the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. "He has been a driving force for all of us, the guiding force."


___


[size=4][b]Daniel O'Neil[/b][/size]

O'Neil, 22, was a graduate student in engineering and [b]played guitar and wrote his own songs, which he posted on a Web site, . [url="http://www.residenthippy.com"]http://www.residenthippy.com[/url][/b]

Friend Steve Craveiro described him as smart, responsible and a hard worker, someone who never got into trouble.

"He would come home from school over the summer and talk about projects, about building bridges and stuff like that," Craveiro said. "He loved his family. He was pretty much destined to be extremely successful. He just didn't deserve to have happen what happened."

O'Neil graduated in 2002 from Lincoln High School in Rhode Island and graduated from Lafayette College in Easton, Pa., before heading to Virginia Tech, where he was also a teaching assistant, Craveiro said.


___


[size=4][b]Juan Ramon Ortiz[/b][/size]

Ortiz, 26, who was from Puerto Rico, was teaching a class as part of his graduate program in civil engineering at Virginia Tech.

The family's neighbors in the San Juan suburb of Bayamon remembered Ortiz as a quiet, [b]dedicated son who decorated his parents' one-story concrete house each Christmas and played in a salsa band with his father on weekends.[/b]

"He was an extraordinary son, what any father would have wanted," said Ortiz's father, also named Juan Ramon Ortiz.

Marilys Alvarez, 22, heard Ortiz's mother scream from the house next door when she learned of her son's death. Alvarez said she had wanted to study in the United States, but was now reconsidering.

"Here the violence is bad, but you don't see that," she said. "It's really sad. You can't go anywhere now."


___


[size=4][b]Mary Karen Read[/b][/size]

Read was born in South Korea into an Air Force family and lived in Texas and California before settling in the northern Virginia suburb of Annandale.

Read, 19, [b]considered a handful of colleges, including nearby George Mason University, before choosing Virginia Tech.[/b] It was a popular destination among her Annandale High School classmates, according to her aunt Karen Kuppinger.

She had yet to declare a major.

"I think she wanted to try to spread her wings," said Kuppinger, of Rochester, N.Y.

Kuppinger said her niece had struggled adjusting to Tech's sprawling 2,600-acre campus. But [b]she had recently begun making friends and looking into a sorority.[/b]

Kuppinger said the family started calling Read as news reports surfaced.

"After three or four hours passed and she hadn't picked up her cell phone or answered her e-mail ... we did get concerned," Kuppinger said. "We honestly thought she would pop up."[/quote]

[|Bengal Migration|]

some new info:

[quote]The gunman involved in the deadliest shooting in modern U.S. history had previously been accused of stalking two female student and had been taken to a mental health facility in 2005, but no charges were filed, police said Wednesday.

Cho Seung-Hui worried one woman enough with his calls and e-mail in 2005 that police were called in, said Police Chief Wendell Flinchum.

He said the woman declined to press charges and Cho was referred to the university disciplinary system. The case was then outside the scope of the police department, he said.

In a separate incident, the department received a call from Cho’s parents who were concerned that he might be suicidal and he was taken to mental health facility, Flinchum said.

Cho's roommates and professors described on Wednesday a troubled, quiet young man who rarely spoke to his roommates or made eye contact with them. Roommates Joseph Aust and Karan Grewal said his bizarre behavior became even less predictable in recent weeks.[/quote]

full article: [url="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18169776/"]http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18169776/[/url]

[Jamie_B]

[quote name='ONYX' post='474022' date='Apr 18 2007, 08:49 AM']
[img]http://forum.go-bengals.com/public/style_emoticons//6.gif[/img][/quote]

[Guest CincyInDC]

[url="http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2841205&campaign=rss&source=MLBHeadlines"]http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?i...ce=MLBHeadlines[/url]

[quote][b][size=5]
Nationals show support by sporting Virginia Tech caps[/size][/b]

Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- The [url="http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/clubhouse?team=was"]Washington Nationals[/url] wore Virginia Tech baseball caps during Tuesday night's game against the [url="http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/clubhouse?team=atl"]Atlanta Braves[/url] as a tribute to the victims of Monday's shooting rampage at the school.

[img]http://assets.espn.go.com/photo/2007/0417/mlb_u_young_195.jpg[/img]
James Lang/US PRESSWIREDmitri Young and the rest of the Nationals wore Virginia Tech hats in tribute to the victims of Monday's shooting rampage at the school."It was an honor to wear that hat," Washington center fielder [url="http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/players/profile?statsId=7415"]Ryan Church[/url] said after his team's 6-4 loss. "Our thoughts and prayers go out to the victims and their families."

Nationals players wore a few different versions of the hats; most were burgundy with "VT" in orange or white. Manager Manny Acta, pitching coach Randy St. Claire and other coaches wore white "VT" caps with burgundy stitching.

Left fielder [url="http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/players/profile?statsId=6937"]Chris Snelling[/url]'s cap will be sent to the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., while Acta and some players autographed their hats, which will be sent to Virginia Tech.

"The Nationals have you in our hearts and in our prayers," relief pitcher [url="http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/players/profile?statsId=7221"]Chad Cordero[/url] wrote above his signature.

The Nationals said the idea of wearing the Virginia Tech caps came from a fan from Calvert County, Md., who e-mailed team president Stan Kasten.

"When I read it, I thought, 'Wow. This is really nice,'" Kasten said. "It was the very least we could do."

He said the team ran the tribute past Major League Baseball beforehand and commissioner Bud Selig and chief operating officer Bob DuPuy "were instantly supportive."

The Nationals held moments of silence for the victims of Monday's shooting before their home games Monday and Tuesday. Washington's RFK Stadium is a drive of about 4 hours from the university's Blacksburg campus.

"This happening in our backyard, we're more sensitive to this than anybody," Kasten said.

Nationals third baseman [url="http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/players/profile?statsId=7627"]Ryan Zimmerman[/url] is from Virginia Beach and went to college at Virginia Tech rival Virginia.

"It was special, especially for me, them kind of being the school we always wanted to beat, more than anybody else," Zimmerman said. "It kind of shows you how little sports mean. ... It makes you realize how lucky we have it and not to take any days for granted."[/quote]

[Guest BlackJesus]

[center][size=6][b]The Shooter [/b][/size]


[img]http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thenewswire/archive/ap/cho1.jpg[/img][/center]

[Chris Henrys Dealer]

The videos he sent to NBC can seen on CNN.com

[Chris Henrys Dealer]

And in other news:

[url="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6567329.stm"]http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6567329.stm[/url]

[quote][b]Up to 200 killed in Baghdad bombs[/b]

A US troop "surge" has not stopped insurgent attacks

Enlarge Image
Nearly 200 people have been killed in a string of attacks in Iraq's capital, Baghdad - the worst day of violence since a US security operation began.

In one of the deadliest attacks of the last four years, some 140 people were killed in a car bombing in a food market in Sadriya district.

A witness said the area had been turned into "a swimming pool of blood".

The attacks came as PM Nouri Maliki said Iraqi forces would take control of security across Iraq by the year's end.

As the number of people killed in the Sadriya market bombing continued to climb, Mr Maliki called the perpetrators infidels and ordered the detention of the Iraqi army commander responsible for security in that area.

"This monstrous attack today did not distinguish between the old and young, between men and women," he said.

"It targeted the population in a way that reminds us of the massacres and genocide committed by the former dictatorship."

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said the attacks were "a horrifying thing," but said insurgents would not derail the ongoing security drive in Baghdad.

'Burned alive'

The bomb in Shia-dominated Sadriya was reportedly left in a parked car and exploded at about 1600 (1200 GMT) in the middle of a crowd of workers and shoppers.

The market was being rebuilt after it was destroyed by a bombing in February which killed more than 130 people.

The powerful bomb started a fire which swept over cars and minibuses parked nearby, burning many people and sending a large plume of smoke over Baghdad.


BAGHDAD ATTACKS
Locations of Baghdad bombs
Sadriya: Car bomb kills 140 at market
Sadr City: Car bomb kills at least 35 at checkpoint
Karrada: Car bomb near private hospital kills at least 11
Al-Shurja: Minibus bomb kills at least two people
Two other attacks kill about 11 more people

Bombs mar handover plan
In pictures: Baghdad carnage

Television pictures showed a blasted scene littered with blackened and twisted wreckage.

One witness told the Reuters news agency that many of the victims were women and children.

"I saw dozens of dead bodies," the man said. "Some people were burned alive inside minibuses. Nobody could reach them after the explosion.

"There were pieces of flesh all over the place."

Ahmed Hameed, a shopkeeper in the area said: "The street was transformed into a swimming pool of blood."

About an hour earlier, a suicide car bomb attack on a police checkpoint in Sadr City killed 35 people.

Another parked car bomb killed at least 11 people near a hospital in the Karrada district of Baghdad, while in al-Shurja district at least two people were killed by a bomb left on a minibus.

Two other attacks in the capital killed and wounded about 11 more people.

Hospitals in Baghdad were inundated with more than 200 injured people, many of them with serious burns from the bomb at the Sadriya market.

Car and suicide bombings have occurred almost daily in Baghdad in recent months, despite a US-led security crackdown since February.

The bombers are proving that they can slip through the tightened security net and defy the clampdown, says the BBC's Jim Muir in Baghdad.

Security handover

Most of the attacks have been in Shia areas, increasing pressure for the Shia militias to step up their campaign of reprisal killings against the Sunni community in which the insurgents are based, says our correspondent.

As Baghdad was rocked by explosions, security in Maysan province to the south was transferred from British to Iraqi control.


MAJOR ATTACKS
6 March 2007: 90 killed in double suicide bombing in Hilla
3 Feb 2007: 130 killed in lorry bomb in a Baghdad market in mainly Shia area
2 Dec 2006: More than 50 killed in car bombs in same Baghdad market
23 Nov 2006: 200 killed in wave of car bombings and mortar blasts in Baghdad's Shia Sadr City
7 April 2006: 85 killed in triple suicide bombing at Shia mosque in Baghdad

Maysan is the fourth of the country's 18 provinces to be handed over to Iraqi security control.

Iraq's national security adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie said the three provinces of the autonomous Kurdish region would be next.

"Then it will be province by province until we achieve [the complete transfer] before the end of the year," he said in a speech at the handover ceremony delivered on behalf of Prime Minister Maliki.

On Monday, the Iraqi parliament bloc loyal to radical cleric Moqtada Sadr withdrew from the cabinet, demanding Mr Maliki set a timetable for a US troop withdrawal.

But foreign troops are likely to remain in Iraq for some time.

Analysts say that even if Iraqi forces take the lead in providing security across the country, they will need support from US and other coalition troops.

The attacks in Baghdad came as officials from more than 60 countries attended a UN conference in Geneva on the plight of Iraqi refugees.

The UN estimates up to 50,000 people flee the violence in Iraq each month.[/quote]

[Jamie_B]

[url="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18169776/"]http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18169776/[/url]

[quote]While there was some marginal value to the package we received, the fact of the matter is ... the package merely [b]confirms what we already knew[/b][/quote]


[b]THEN HOW THE FUCK WAS IT LEAGAL FOR HIM TO BUY A GUN?!?!?!?!?!?!!!!!!!!!!!!!![/b]

[|Bengal Migration|]

[quote name='Jamie_B' post='474772' date='Apr 19 2007, 07:02 PM'][url="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18169776/"]http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18169776/[/url]
[b]THEN HOW THE FUCK WAS IT LEAGAL FOR HIM TO BUY A GUN?!?!?!?!?!?!!!!!!!!!!!!!![/b][/quote]
I think you might be misreading this.... The tape did not help further the investigation is what I believe the quote is referring to. Likely because they found copies of the files on his computer two days earlier if I had to guess.

[Jamie_B]

[quote name='WhoDeyUK' post='474806' date='Apr 19 2007, 03:31 PM']I think you might be misreading this.... The tape did not help further the investigation is what I believe the quote is referring to. Likely because they found copies of the files on his computer two days earlier if I had to guess.[/quote]


I had understood them (the police, or at least campus police) to have already known the kid to have mental issues, (he was checked into a hospital for 48 hours as Im hearing reports). My question is how is it leagal for someone of that status to purchase a gun?

[|Bengal Migration|]

[quote name='Jamie_B' post='474811' date='Apr 19 2007, 08:36 PM']I had understood them (the police, or at least campus police) to have already known the kid to have mental issues, (he was checked into a hospital for 48 hours as Im hearing reports). My question is how is it leagal for someone of that status to purchase a gun?[/quote]
My (albeit hopeful) understanding is that they learned that info afterward, as they were investigating the shooting.

I'm with you though, the idea that someone known not only to have mental issues, but who has shown violent tendencies in his writings, should never be allowed to legally purchase a gun.

[Jamie_B]

[quote name='WhoDeyUK' post='474813' date='Apr 19 2007, 03:41 PM']My (albeit hopeful) understanding is that they learned that info afterward, as they were investigating the shooting.

I'm with you though, the idea that someone known not only to have mental issues, but who has shown violent tendencies in his writings, should never be allowed to legally purchase a gun.[/quote]


Then it sounds as if there is some sort of disconnect between the hospital he was at and the authorties. To me once he was entered into it there should have been some sort of message sent to authorties that "hey this kids got issues" and he should have been blacklisted from there.