By Tony Burchyns
Morgan Hill
– James and Vi Patrick spent Monday morning in agony, not
knowing if their son, David, was alive or dead.
Morgan Hill – James and Vi Patrick spent Monday morning in agony, not knowing if their son, David, was alive or dead.
As parents, they faced the unthinkable: a loose gunman on their son’s college campus, killing people at random.
“It was total anxiety,” said James, a Morgan Hill resident who learned of the Virginia Tech shooting rampage Monday morning on a cable news channel.
For roughly one hour, James called his son’s cell phone, failing to connect through overwhelmed circuits.
Finally, at about 10am PST, he connected with 18-year-old David, a freshman at the university who graduated from Live Oak High School in 2006.
“He told me all hell’s broken loose,” the father said. “There’d been a shooting, and he had been out on campus that morning.”
As news reports painted a more gruesome picture of the shooting rampage, David worried about one of his friends who had not returned to the dorm. The next morning, he learned his friend Matthew LaPorte, a sophomore from Pennsylvania, had been shot and killed.
James said his son and a group of his friends are staying at a a relative’s home in New Jersey until some of the shock wears off.
Requests by South Valley Newspapers for an interview with David were declined.
Authorities at Virginia Tech have confirmed 33 people, including the gunman, had been shot and killed in what was apparently the worst shooting rampage in U.S. history. The shootings occurred in two attacks on the Blacksburg, Va., campus. The first occurred at about 7:15am when two people were shot in a campus dorm. About two and a half hours later, 31 others, including the gunman, were killed at a classroom building across campus.
James said he and his son are angry at the way campus police responded. After the first attack, he said, the campus should have been locked down. Additionally, administrators should have recognized “red flags” about the shooter’s mental state. The gunman, who committed suicide as police moved in, was Cho Seung Hui, a student at the university. For more than a year, campus authorities were aware of Cho’s troubled mental state.
“The president of the campus (Charles Steger) should resign,” James said. “We don’t understand why precautions weren’t taken after the first shooting. And the shooter had red flags going back to 1995.”
Gavilan College spokeswoman Jan Bernstein Chargin said the Gilroy-based community college, with satellite campuses in Morgan Hill and Hollister, would review its safety polices in light of the shooting.
Today, a committee of staff and students will begin reviewing Gavilan’s emergency preparedness plan.
