An Additional Update on the Virginia Tech Shooter

Ifound thelas sentence interesting. The shooter's friend rejects any comparison to the previous Virginia Tech shooter, despite several similarities. I wouldn't be surprised if he also rejects any accountability by gun loons for the misuse of guns.

From MSNBC.com

Friend: Va. Tech shooter had visited gun range

By The Associated Press

RADFORD, Va.-- A friend says the man who authorities say killed a Virginia Tech police officer had visited a shooting range this year but hadn't gone for several months because he didn't have bullets for his gun.
Matt Dailey tells The Roanoke Times  that he considered 22-year-old Ross Truett Ashley his best friend. Authorities say Ashley killed police officer Deriek Crouse on the Virginia Tech campus while the officer made a traffic stop, then killed himself not long after.
Dailey says the two had made two or three trips to the shooting range — the same one used by Seung-Hui Cho, the gunman who killed 32 people and then himself on the campus in 2007.
However, Dailey dismissed any comparisons between Cho and his friend.

Update on the Virginia Tech Shooter - New Details

Shaved head? This sounds a bit like Loughner who shot Congresswoman Gabriel Giffords in January.  Anyone want to bet we will be learning soon that this guy who appears to have been the shooter had some kind of mental health issues?  I'll go out on a limb here and speculate that he will have leaned right, and been heavily into guns and gun fantasies.

We don't fund the care of mental illness health care and mental illness diagnosis.

We don't prevent the disturbed people in our population from getting firearms, not nearly enough.  Some of the pro-gunners claim that the only time we can act regarding gun ownership or carry by the dangerously mentally ill is AFTER there is a tragedy.  AFTER is too late.

They claim this is about freedom. No one who is injured or killed by someone committing firearm violence is free.  Their lies AND I would argue their very freedom to pursue their 'life, liberty and pursuit of happiness' is taken away from them, their core civil rights.

Clearly some people's use of firearms make many of the rest of us less free.  With less violence, with fewer weapons in a civil society we become more free and more civil.  With fewer guns and less gun violence we are all more free, we are all safer, we are all less violent and fewer among us are victimized by those who are violent.

 

From the AP byway of MSNBC.com:

1hour ago

Va. Tech gunman called quiet; went to small school

By Bob Lewis, Zinie Chen Sampson, The Associated Press

Virginia State Police via AP

Police identified the Virginia Tech gunman on Friday as Ross Truett Ashley, 22, a part-time college student from nearby Radford University.

BLACKSBURG, Va. -- The man who authorities say killed a Virginia Tech police officer was described as a typical college student in many ways, making it difficult to understand why he would commit an armed robbery and then, apparently at random, target the patrolman before killing himself.
The gunman was identified Friday as Ross Truett Ashley, a 22-year-old part-time business student at Radford University, about 10 miles from the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg. He first drew authorities' attention Wednesday when, they say, he walked into his landlord's office with a handgun and demanded the keys to a Mercedes-Benz SUV.
As investigators worked to unravel a motive, thousands of people gathered for a candlelight vigil Friday night on a campus all too familiar with tragedy.
Those who knew Ashley said he could be standoffish. He liked to run down the hallways and recently shaved his head, a neighbor said.
Virginia State Police said he walked up to officer Deriek W. Crouse after noon on Thursday and shot him to death as the patrolman sat in his unmarked cruiser during a traffic stop. Ashley was not involved in the stop and did not know the driver, who is cooperating with police, they said.
Authorities said Ashley then took off for the campus greenhouses, ditching his pullover, wool cap and backpack as police quickly sent out a campus-wide alert that a gunman was on the loose. Officials said the alert system put in place after the nation's worst mass slaying in recent memory worked well, but it nevertheless rattled a community still coping with the day a student gunman killed 32 people and then himself.
A deputy sheriff on patrol noticed a man acting suspiciously in a parking lot about a half-mile from the shooting. The deputy drove up and down the rows of the sprawling Cage parking lot and lost sight of the man for a moment, then found Ashley shot to death on the pavement, a handgun nearby. No one saw him take his life and he wasn't carrying any ID.
State police spokeswoman Corinne Geller said Ashley appears to have acted alone and didn't know the slain officer: "At this time we have no connection between the two of them, that they knew one another or had encountered one another prior to the shooting," she said.
'Nothing unusual'
Ashley lived in an apartment on the top floor of a worn, gray three-story brick building in the small city of Radford, a college town. He lived above a yogurt shop, consignment store, barber shop and a tattoo parlor.
On Friday night, students popped in and out of the building visiting friends. Mandy Adams, a Radford grad student, said Ashley had recently shaved his head. Other than running down the hallways, he was quiet, she said.
"He would just run down the hallway — never walk, always run," said Adams, who was out on a rear fire escape with a glass of white wine and a cigarette to calm her nerves. "It's going to be really creepy when they come to take his stuff out of here."

Update on the Virginia Tech Shooter

Here is an update on the Virginia Tech shooting; I actually despise Fox News for misrepresenting itself as a news organization when they are more of a propaganda outlet.  But it's important to change up the news sources from time to time, so here goes - and we'll just have to correct any errors they make later as best we can (because God knows they don't reliably do so ).

I would point out that all of our pro--gunners who can't brush their teeth much less leave the house without strapping on a firearm are foolish in believing they are safe, that they are trained enough, fast enough, smart enough to respond to a random threat to their safety.

I would underline here that this was a trained police officer, a military veteran, who was openly armed, - from the article:

"Crouse was a trained firearms and defense instructor with a specialty in crisis intervention"

but we are supposed to believe they are going to shoot that dastardly criminal / crazy person bent on killing them, when events like this demonstrate clearly they would not be capable of doing so.

From Fox News and the AP:

Police Identify Virginia Tech Gunman as 22-Year-Old Student at Nearby School

Published December 09, 2011

| Associated Press

BLACKSBURG, Va. –  Police said Friday that Ross Truett Ashley, of Radford, was responsible for killing a Virginia Tech police officer Thursday, triggering a campus-wide lockdown for thousands of students.
Ashley killed himself after shooting the officer.

Police also say Ashley stole a car on Wednesday from a real estate office in Radford, which is about 15 miles from Virginia Tech.

The shooting shook up the campus, the scene of the nation's worst mass slaying in recent memory.

The man who killed a Virginia Tech police officer walked up to the patrolman he did not know and fired, then took off for the campus greenhouses, ditching his pullover, wool cap and backpack. He made his way to a nearby parking lot and when a deputy spotted him, he took his own life, leaving fresh questions on a campus still coping with the nation's worst mass slaying in recent memory.

Why didn't he run or engage the deputy who closed in? Was he even aware that thousands of students had just been alerted by cell phone that a gunman was on the loose and the campus was locked down? And why did he shoot an officer at a school he never attended?

"That's very much the fundamental part of the investigation right now," state police spokeswoman Corrine Geller said Friday at a news conference.
Authorities said they know who the gunman is, but they were waiting to publicly name him because they said his family didn't know yet. A law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity described the shooter as in his early 20s from Virginia.

The gunman was likely the same man who is accused of stealing a 2011 white Mercedes SUV from a real estate office Wednesday in Radford, which is about 15 miles from Virginia Tech. Office employees told police a man came in with a handgun and demanded keys to one of their vehicles.

The office is located in a gritty part of Radford and caters to students who go to the city's small namesake school. At the real estate office Friday, the shades were drawn and the doors locked.
It's not clear what happened between the robbery and 24 hours later when university officer Deriek W. Crouse, 39, was shot. Police were looking for surveillance video around campus to see if it would lend any clues to the gunman's whereabouts before the shooting.

Crouse was a trained firearms and defense instructor with a specialty in crisis intervention. He had been on the force for four years, joining about six months after 33 people were killed in a classroom building and dorm April 16, 2007.

At 12:15 p.m. Thursday, Crouse pulled over a student and was shot while sitting in his unmarked cruiser. The student didn't have any link to the gunman, Geller said.

Shortly before 12:30 p.m., police received a call from a witness who said an officer had been shot. About six minutes later, the first campus-wide alert was sent by email, text message and electronic signs in university buildings. Many students on campus were preparing for exams, and some described a frantic scene after the initial alert. Soon, heavily armed officers were walking around campus, caravans of SWAT vehicles were driving around and other police cars with emergency lights flashing patrolled nearby.

Students outdoors went inside buildings. Those already there stayed put. Everybody waited.
Police aren't sure what the gunman was doing at this point. After the shooting, he fled on foot to the greenhouses, where he left some of his clothes and his ID.

Fifteen minutes after the witness called police, a deputy sheriff on patrol noticed a man at the back of another parking lot about a half-mile from the shooting. The man was by himself, looking around furtively and acting "a little suspicious," according to Geller.

The deputy drove up and down the rows of the sprawling Cage parking lot and lost sight of the man for a moment. The deputy then found the man lying on the pavement, shot to death. The handgun was nearby.

Police said nobody witnessed the suicide, the parking lot apparently vacant because of warnings. For three more hours, students checked their phones, computers and TVs. Finally, the school gave the all clear.

The events unfolded on the same day Virginia Tech officials were in Washington, fighting a federal government fine over their handling of the 2007 massacre, and the shooting brought back painful memories. About 150 students gathered silently Thursday night for a candlelight vigil on a field facing the stone plaza memorial for the 2007 victims.

"Why Tech, why again?" said Philip Sturgill, a jewelry store owner. "It's so senseless. This is a lovely, lovely place."

An official vigil is planned Friday night.

School spokesman Larry Hincker said the alert system worked exactly as expected.
"It's fair to say that life is very different at college campuses today. The telecommunications technology and protocols that we have available to us, that we now have in place, didn't exist years ago," he said. "We believe the system worked very well."