Nacho wrote:OJ was found by a jury of his peers to be innocent. "If the glove does not fit you must acquit." Try Jim Bowie.
So you believe OJ did not do it? There is a difference between being found innocent and being innocent. That is the beauty of the legal system. As I said earlier, I would rather one go free than an innoncent one be jailed and I would rather risk one crazy person with a gun than have the right to defend my self be taken away.
According to the Washington Post, the kid was from Centreville, Virginia, a decent, middle class suburb of DC. He emigrated from Korea when he was a very young kid. His mother is a substitute teacher. Apparently he snapped. The Police found notes in his room about priviledged kids, debauchery, snobs. Given that the first shooting was in a dorm room at 7:15 in the morning and a boy and girl were shot dead in the room, I suspect he was pronouncing some sort of twisted judgment on the "debaucherers". Then who knows. He apparently was behind a bomb threat to the Engineering building several days ago. So, he definitely had something bothering him about that school.
expony18 wrote:Stallion, JT, etc. , what potential lawsuit could the school see from this, if any (neg., etc.?) for not closing down the campus for nearly two hours after the intial shooting?
Yes, among a whole laundry list of other claims. Would be interesting to get EastStang's perspective on governmental immunity in Virginia though. Could be that no civil suit can be brought at all.
As much as I'd love to answer that question, who knows, my firm might end up representing a victim or family of a victim. Don't want to have my off the cuff ramblings be cited against me later. Let's just say, suing Virginia Tech or the Montgomery County Sheriff in Montgomery County would be akin to suing A&M in College Station.
it's not so much about the lawsuit, but what the school is responsible for in the safety of their students... it's a terrible thing that happened and other universities need to take a serious look at the way they handle situations such as this. i know in the "bubble" on the hilltop nobody thinks this could happen, but its something people need to acknowledge and be prepared for. not that you could ever really be prepared for something like this, but the way things were handled need to be evaluated and fixed, which MAY have saved the lives in the second shooting
Hind sight is always 20/20. Put yourself in the position of the administration. Not knowing what we know now, what would your reaction have been?...honestly now. There was nothing to indicate that there was someone on campus randomly killing people left and right until he started going classroom to classroom 2 hours later. You don't shut down a whole campus and cancel classes because two people in an isolated situation were murdered. As tragic as that is, that would not appear to be a mass murder situation. Had he shot more people at the dorm, it would have put a whole different complextion on the situation...but he didn't. He may have even done that as a diversion tactic to draw security away from his real target. Who knows?
PK wrote:Hind sight is always 20/20. Put yourself in the position of the administration. Not knowing what we know now, what would your reaction have been?...honestly now. There was nothing to indicate that there was someone on campus randomly killing people left and right until he started going classroom to classroom 2 hours later. You don't shut down a whole campus and cancel classes because two people in an isolated situation were murdered. As tragic as that is, that would not appear to be a mass murder situation. Had he shot more people at the dorm, it would have put a whole different complextion on the situation...but he didn't. He may have even done that as a diversion tactic to draw security away from his real target. Who knows?
Well said, PK. I wish more people would take the time to place themselves in the position of the officers trying to make decisions that morning.
EastStang wrote:As much as I'd love to answer that question, who knows, my firm might end up representing a victim or family of a victim. Don't want to have my off the cuff ramblings be cited against me later. Let's just say, suing Virginia Tech or the Montgomery County Sheriff in Montgomery County would be akin to suing A&M in College Station.
didn't that actually occur after the bonfire collapse?
PK wrote:Had he shot more people at the dorm, it would have put a whole different complextion on the situation...but he didn't.
wow that's a great argument... try telling that to the parents of the children who were killed (both in the dorm and the classes)... and you're right it's easy now to say what could have been done to prevent this from happening, because nothing like this has ever happened at a school before... give me a break. after columbine my high school once a year made us go through an exercise that would "prepare" us if something like that ever happened, i guess in college you don't have to worry about nutballs? and i guess one or two people being MURDERED in a dorm does not warrant shutting down the school, WHILE THE KILLER IS STILL ON THE LOOSE....
PK wrote:Had he shot more people at the dorm, it would have put a whole different complextion on the situation...but he didn't.
wow that's a great argument... try telling that to the parents of the children who were killed (both in the dorm and the classes)... and you're right it's easy now to say what could have been done to prevent this from happening, because nothing like this has ever happened at a school before... give me a break. after columbine my high school once a year made us go through an exercise that would "prepare" us if something like that ever happened, i guess in college you don't have to worry about nutballs? and i guess one or two people being MURDERED in a dorm does not warrant shutting down the school, WHILE THE KILLER IS STILL ON THE LOOSE....
Don't turn this into the blame game. There is one person to blame for the deaths of 32 innocent people. It is VERY easy to sit back in your nice, comfy computer chair and lambast the decisions that officers and officials made at the time they, with the time they had, with the information they had at that time. The facts of the matter are, with everything so chaotic and unclear, the first shooting looked like nothing more than a individual dispute, not a deep, welled up hatred of groups of people. You have to, I know this is hard, trust the competence of other people to make right decisions with the knowledge and information they have. Anything more or less is unfair and irresponsible.
Could things have been done better? Definitely, but that is where evaluations need to be done, improvements made, and situations like this avoided in the future. Lawsuits will not help, point fingers will not help. This is a horrific tragedy that chills me to my bones, but please do not attempt to make sense of all of this by handing out blame.
PK wrote:Had he shot more people at the dorm, it would have put a whole different complextion on the situation...but he didn't.
wow that's a great argument... try telling that to the parents of the children who were killed (both in the dorm and the classes)... and you're right it's easy now to say what could have been done to prevent this from happening, because nothing like this has ever happened at a school before... give me a break. after columbine my high school once a year made us go through an exercise that would "prepare" us if something like that ever happened, i guess in college you don't have to worry about nutballs? and i guess one or two people being MURDERED in a dorm does not warrant shutting down the school, WHILE THE KILLER IS STILL ON THE LOOSE....
Once again my friend, in all honesty, what would you have done then...without knowing what you know now? A campus of 26,000 people plus faculty and staff is like a small town...you don't usually shut down a town because of a double homocide. There was nothing to indicate that this was a person on a killing spree, a mass murder...until 2 hours later. It is all a great tragedy, sad beyond one's imagination for the families and friends of the victims, but to speculate that a lock down or any other action could have prevented the ultimate outcome is just that...speculation. The world is unfortunately full of nuts and other dangers in general that we have little control over. Short of locking ourselves away from the rest of the world, there is no such thing as total safety. We just pray every day that we are kept safe and then go on with our lives.
