Eyewitness Accounts at Virginia Tech

Check out these eyewitness accounts:

"I saw bullets hit people's bodies. There was blood everywhere. People in the class were passed out, I don't know whether from shock or pain. But I was one of only four that made it out of that classroom. The rest were dead or injured." [The shooter looked like]"just a normal looking kid, Asian, but he had on a Boy Scout type outfit. He wore a tan button up vest, and this black vest, maybe it was for ammo or something."

"[I was listening to my iPod when I heard] a big bang. I recognized the sound of gunfire but was mostly confused .... I looked around at the other students on the drillfield, most of them confused like myself....it clicked in everyone's head immediately the sound we heard was a gun shot and everyone started running. I went back to the dorm, locked the door, and turned on the news."

"[We were walking to class when] we heard a couple gunshots and we started running. Everyone was sprinting away. There were literally, like, 300, 400 students just running away from the site. They just told us all to get going, and we started running."

"He (Cho, the murderer)looked, I guess you could say, serious. He didn't look frightened at all, he didn't look angry. Just a straight face. He didn't say a single word the whole time. He didn't say get down, he didn't say anything. He just came in and started shooting."

"I was in class when we heard loud bangs coming from the hallway. The girl sitting by the door peeked out and saw the shooter, so she immediately closed the door. Three other students moved a table and barricaded the door. A few seconds later, the shooter tried to open the door, but my classmates kept it well shut. The shooter shot the door twice, one of which hit the podium in the front of the classroom and the other continued out the window. At this point he reloaded, shot the door again - this shot did not penetrate - and moved on to the other classrooms. Thankfully, nobody in our room was hurt. The shooting continued for several minutes, until the police arrived, and the shooter must have shot at least 80-100 rounds. As we heard the police arrive outside the building, the shooting continued, and the officers eventually came through the building. Even though it seemed to take quite a long time, the timer on my phone seemed to indicate that the whole sequence of events was over in only 25 minutes."

"I was working in my office and then I heard three "bang bang bang" sounds and I looked outside and I saw a bunch of police officers, guns drawn, hiding behind trees."

"We [saw armed police officers running by and we] were like, 'What's going on?' Because this definitely is a quaint town where stuff doesn't really happen. It's pretty boring here."

"[We initially thought the gunshots were construction noise until we heard screaming and police officers with bulletproof vests and machine guns entered our classroom]. "They were telling us to put our hands above our head and if we didn't cooperate and put our hands above our heads they would shoot. I guess they were afraid, like us, like the shooter was going to be among one of us."

"...she was in class and they heard a banging, her teacher opened the door to find out what was going on, and after not seeing anything, closed the door. Not more than two seconds later, a gunman entered her room, to which the class responded by getting underneath the desks and basicly hiding as well as possible from this guy. He then shot at the class somewhere between 8 to 12 times and then left. She said that the gunman, who looked Asian, left and She and another classmate barricaded the door while others attended to the wounded and injured. The gunman came back and tried to get in, but because of the barricade couldn't and proceeded to shoot at the door at hip level, while kate was and the other classmates were at ground level."

Source: Various published accounts