Blacksburg, Virginia: The gunman who opened fire in Virginia Tech's Norris Hall, killing more than 30 people before turning the gun on himself, was "one of our students," university president Charles Steger has said.
The Virginia Tech Police suspects that the killer is a 23-year old South Korean, whose name is Cho Seung Hui. Cho was an undergraduate student in his senior year as an English major.
He lived in a Virginia Tech dormitory, the president said, declining to provide further details.
The police say that the same weapon was used in both the shootouts. Investigators say the first victim of the shooting was a woman known to the killer.
Steger added that he was still uncertain whether the gunman at Norris was the one who fatally shot two people in a dorm two hours earlier.
One gunman?
However, the president said he didn't think a second gunman was on the loose.
University police Chief Wendell Flinchum said police have a preliminary identification of one gunman, but they were not ready to release it.
The university and police are still in the process of releasing the names of the 32 people killed in Monday's shootings.
A doctor at a Blacksburg hospital described the injuries he saw Monday as "amazing" and the shooter as "brutal."
"There wasn't a shooting victim that didn't have less than three bullet wounds in them," said Dr. Joseph Cacioppo of Montgomery Regional Hospital.
A law enforcement source close to the investigation said a .22-caliber handgun and a 9 mm handgun were recovered at the scene.
As Americans reel in the wake of the deadliest shooting in their country’s history, questions are many but answers are few.
Did the same gunman kill two people in a dormitory and then two hours later chain the doors of an academic building and begin to kill as many as he could?
The day's first shooting, at the West Ambler Johnston dormitory, which houses 895 students, occurred about 7:15 a.m.
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At the time of the later shootings at Norris Hall, police were investigating a "person of interest" in the dormitory shootings, Flinchum said. But the man -- a non-student who knew one of the victims -- had not been arrested, and it is unclear if he has any link to the other gunman, he said.
Steger told reporters Monday that police found the front doors of Norris Hall chained shut and that by the time they got to the second floor, the gunfire stopped.
Virginia Tech has canceled all classes for the rest of the week. Norris Hall (where the massacre took place) will be shut for the next semester.
University authorities are in the process of identifying victims and notifying next-of-kin. They have not yet released a list of casualties.
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