Darkness Falls

Thursday, Apr. 19, 2007 By NANCY GIBBS

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Mourners gather during a candlelight vigil on the Drill field at Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg, Va.

Hector Emanuel for TIME

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When the students in French class heard the noises, teacher Jocelyn Couture-Nowak stiffened: "That's not what I think it is, is it?" Clay Violand, 20, a junior in international studies, pointed at the teacher and said, "Put that desk in front of the door. Now!" She did, but the door still nudged open, and a gun came into view, then a man. Violand dove under a desk as Cho began systematically shooting people, almost in rhythm, taking his time. "After every shot I thought, 'O.K., the next one is me,'" Violand said, so he made himself lie perfectly still, lifeless. "Sometimes after a shot I would hear a quick moan, or a slow one, or a grunt, or a quiet, reserved yell from one of the girls. After some time--I couldn't tell you if it was five minutes or an hour--he left. The room was silent except for the haunting sound of moans, some quiet crying and someone muttering, 'It's O.K. It's going to be O.K. They will be here soon.'"

But it was not the police who came. It was Cho, back for another round, reloading his gun and firing another shot into the dead and wounded. He thinks he heard Cho reload three times, and at every shot he braced himself, thinking, "This one is for me." His mind wandered; he wondered what a gunshot wound feels like, how much it would hurt. He wondered if he would die slow or fast, and then he thought of his family. "I was terrified that my parents weren't going to be able to go on after I was gone." There was a student in front of him, also under a desk. He didn't know her name, but they kept eye contact. "She was brave. I don't think she cried. We just stared at each other under the desks." When the police finally arrived, says Violand, it was "just me and that one girl next to me who got up."

Gene Cole, a janitor, heard shots, went around a corner on the second floor and saw a body. Then he saw Cho loading his gun. Cole turned and fled down the stairs. The doors to Norris were chained shut from the inside, the better to slow down police; one report said there were also notes on the doors saying they had been booby-trapped. Outside Norris and elsewhere around campus, police yelled at students to stay inside, grabbed and hauled them indoors. About 9:55 a.m., a second campuswide e-mail went out. It said, "A gunman is loose on campus. Stay in buildings until further notice. Stay away from all windows."

Even before the ambulances swarmed, students were carrying the wounded away from the scene; some were using their balled-up clothes to stanch the bleeding. An emergency-room doctor said there weren't any victims with fewer than three bullets in them. Dr. David Stoeckle told of treating a student with a gunshot through his femoral artery. The student was an Eagle Scout, he said. "He wrapped an electrical cord tight around his leg because he knew he was bleeding to death."

Norris Hall immediately became a 72,000-sq.-ft. crime scene; federal agents called it the most horrifying they had ever encountered. There were bodies in four different classrooms and in the stairwell. A federal source said it appeared that as many as "a couple of hundred" rounds had been discharged. They didn't see a wild rampage, a maniac who suddenly snapped: they saw calculation. The gunman's extraordinary effectiveness and, according to witnesses, well-planned, coldly methodical killing suggested someone who had trained himself in "execution style" killing, according to the federal source.

You can buy only one gun a month in Virginia, but that's the main obstacle. Virginia is for gun lovers--no licenses, no waiting periods, no training required. Investigators found a receipt for a 9-mm Glock 19 in Cho's backpack, bought last month from Roanoke Firearms, where four homicides have reportedly been tied to 16,000 weapons sold there in the last eight years. Cho's purchases had been legal; he had been under a court-ordered "temporary detainment order," a psychiatric evaluation, which is not the same as an involuntary commitment. Thus nothing showed up on the instant background check at the store. He just presented three forms of ID, including a Virginia driver's license, and paid $571 for the gun and a box of 50 9-mm rounds. Employees viewed Cho as "about as clean-cut a kid as you'd ever want to see," says proprietor John Markell. "It was a very unremarkable sale." Cho had obtained the other gun, a Walther P22, in February from a pawn shop near campus. Both are high-quality, accurate guns, easy to load, quick to fire if you know what you're doing.

There was bound to be anger and accusations in the aftermath, and these too went ricocheting through the campus. Wednesday morning even brought a death threat against university president Charles Steger. Why hadn't more been done when it became clear to students and faculty that there there was a very troubled young man in their midst, and why hadn't the school been locked down immediately after the first shootings were reported? "I think the university has blood on their hands because of their lack of action after the first incident," said freshman Billy Bason, 18, who lived in West AJ.

Certainly Cho's behavior--between the stalking complaint, the taking of pictures under his desk--will now force colleges around the country to draw a firmer line between what is acceptable behavior in a creative setting and what is dangerous. Even Facebook ramblings, not to mention poetry-class offerings, may soon trigger an automatic response by schools to pick up the lost souls that dot every campus and keep them at safe distance from their peers. But that tension between preserving the free spirit and openness of an academic community and protecting students from real dangers may take years to sort out.

Meanwhile it looked like moving day at Virginia Tech, with students rolling duffels everywhere, parents not leaving without their kids because, as one mother said, she wanted to be able to hug her son anytime she felt like it. Yes, this was not Columbine or an Amish schoolhouse or any of the instantly iconic places where we have seen our children die, for these were not children. They were young adults who had come to learn how to live as full adults, on their own. Yet it still felt protected, different somehow from the fast-food restaurants or office buildings or factory floors where grownups do their random killing. Every student said it: the place was special.

Those who remained, 10,000 strong, gathered one more time on Tuesday night, when the winds at last had faded and the candles could burn, turning the entire drill field a glowing Hokie orange. When the commemoration was over, students stayed. Many just weren't ready to go home yet, or be by themselves.

With reporting by MICHAEL DUFFY, Elaine Shannon, Tracy Samantha Schmidt, Michael Lindenberger, Annie Johnson, Caitlin Sullivan, Massimo Calabresi / Blacksburg, Adam Zagorin / Centreville, Katherine Rooney / Washington, Jeremy Caplan / New York