Police carry student Kevin Sterne to safety. After being shot, Sterne, an Eagle Scout, wrapped a wire cord around his leg to slow the bleeding, most likely saving his own life (he's now recovering). Said a doctor: "He knew he was bleeding to death." Photo by: ALAN KIM / THE ROANOKE TIMES / AP |
Around 9:20 a.m. a half-mile away at Norris Hall, came a second attack. Cho – a troubled loner who created an imaginary supermodel girlfriend and stalked several women on campus, said one of his former suitemates – apparently fastened chains to the exits of the building, then calmly walked
into a German class on the second floor. Armed with a .22-cal. handgun and a Glock 9-mm pistol, he opened fire. "He started at the
front of the room, and he shot our professor first," says Trey Perkins, 20, who turned over two desks to hide. "He was shooting
people as he saw them. It was so loud. But he never said a word the whole time." Cho then walked into a French class and kept firing.
"He took his time in between each shot, moving from person to person," says Clay Violand, 20, who played dead under a desk and was
one of only two students to walk out of that classroom. "After a shot, I'd hear a quick moan, or a grunt, or a quiet yell . . . I remember having stray thoughts, like, 'I wonder if I'll die fast or slow.' "
In a few frantic minutes, Cho shot people in four classrooms and a stairwell. Witnesses say he tried to kill as many people as he could. Teams of police, locked outside, finally forced their way in, but by then the gunfire had stopped; police found Cho dead in a classroom, an apparent suicide.
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