ROMANIAN-BORN TEACHER KILLED IN CAMPUS SHOOTING

(From Romanian News)

A total of 33 people were killed at the Virginia Tech University in the deadliest shooting rampage in modern US history.

Anger mounted among survivors yesterday after a gunman killed 32 people at a Virginia university in the deadliest incident of the kind. The massacre on Monday ended when the unidentified gunman, described by some students as “Asian-looking,” shot himself, bringing the final death toll to 33 and searing the name of Virginia Tech onto the tragic roll call of US school shootings that includes the likes of Columbine High.


Two teachers were also killed, including Israeli citizen of Romanian origin Liviu Librescu, according to Israeli press reports quoted by Antena 3 TV station. Librescu, 77, was shot by the aggressor while he was trying to block the man from entering the classroom in order to protect his students. One of the students who survived the attack told the media that she saw the teacher while he was trying to keep the shooter out of the classroom.


Librescu, who was born in Romania and immigrated to Israel with his wife in 1978, had been teaching mechanical engineering at Virginia Tech since 1986. He was described by his colleagues at the university as a “real gentleman.” Librescu is survived by his wife and two sons.


No Romanian students at Virginia Tech were harmed in the incident, the Foreign Ministry said. The Spokeswoman for the Ministry, Corina Vintan, said Romanian students at the university contacted the Romanian Embassy to the US and informed the mission that they were not injured. Amid the shock and horrified reaction, there was criticism from some survivors of the college officials who failed to lock down the campus when gunfire first broke out, AFP reports.


There were two separate attacks, two hours apart. The first inside a dormitory early Monday morning killed two people, after which the gunman went on the rampage in another building, killing 30 before shooting himself in the head. About 28 other people were injured. Later yesterday, police confirmed that the gunman was a 23-year-old South Korean student identified as Cho Seung-Hui.


The university’s president, Charles Steger had said earlier the gunman may have acted with a second suspect. “It appears that the second shooter was a resident in our dormitory, it appears he was an on-campus resident,” he said. Relatives and friends of the victims demanded to know why campus officials did not shut down the school after the initial shooting.


A visibly shaken campus police chief said the first shooting had appeared to be “domestic in nature” so authorities did not feel it warranted an immediate lockdown of the sprawling engineering and research university which has some 26,000 students and 10,000 staff. After the second shooting began, police rushed to the Norris Hall classroom building where they found the front doors “chained shut from the inside,” said university president Charles Steger. Police broke in, but the gunfire stopped as they reached the second floor, he said.


US President George W. Bush lamented the loss of life at the university some 425 kilometres southwest of Washington. “Schools should be places of safety and sanctuary and learning,” he told reporters. “When that sanctuary is violated, the impact is felt in every American classroom and every American community.”


The attack sent shudders around the world, triggering shock and sympathy along with questions over gun culture in the United States. From Australia to Iran, world leaders offered condolences to the victims’ families. Australian Prime Minister John Howard recalled how a 1996 rampage by a lone gunman in Tasmania that killed 35 people had forced his government to rethink the whole issue of gun control.


In London, Prime Minister Tony Blair expressed the “profound sadness” of Britain and the British people at the “terrible loss of innocent lives”. Among other foreign governments to offer condolences was Iran, with which the United States cut ties in 1980 after the seizure of the US embassy in Tehran by Islamic revolutionary radicals. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said the massacre was “against divine and humanitarian values.”


French President Jacques Chirac expressed his “horror and consternation” in a statement from his office. In Brussels, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso expressed his profound shock at “the assassination of so many students.”


President Traian Basescu yesterday expressed his condolences to US President George W. Bush for the tragic events at Virginia Tech University, a press release from the president’s office shows. Basescu also expressed solidarity with the American people and the family of the victims and wrote a letter of condolences to Marlena Librescu, the wife of Romanian-born Liviu Librescu, one of the victims.