Students and staff at Virginia Tech were on lockdown today as a gunmen was at large on campus. It all began when a routine traffic stop turned deadly with the shooting death of a police officer.Police later found the body of a man they believed to be the killer with a weapon nearby. The lockdown was lifted and students and staff were able to go about their day, but not without the haunting memories of the shooting that occurred on the campus just 4 years ago when 33 people were killed.

 

My feeling is a repeat of '4/16,'" said a Sociology Department staffer who identified herself only as Brenda. She was locked down at McBride Hall with about 75 others.


"I feel secure and my building is totally locked, but the emotion is like 'here we go again,'" she said.

Derek O'Dell, a third-year student who was wounded in the 2007 shootings, was shaken. He was monitoring the situation from his home a couple of miles from campus.

"At first I was just hoping it was a false alarm," he said. "Then there were reports of two people dead, and the second person shot was in the parking lot where I usually park to go to school, so it was kind of surreal."

Many of the students attending Virginia Tech were not there when the massacre happened in 2007, but still clearly remember the events of that day. And even though technology has vastly improved the alert system on campus, it was still a shock to everyone.

It's crazy that someone would go and do something like that with all the stuff that happened in 2007," said Corey Smith, a 19-year-old sophomore. He told The Associated Press that he stayed inside after seeing the alerts from the school.

 

More From 101.9 The Bull