Click a name on the left to learn more.";
virginiatechWATN[i++] = new Array("","Kevin Sterne:
Photo became symbol of the tragedy","","http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Photo_StoryLevel/080411/080411-va-tech-sterne.standard.jpg","","", "", "", "", "", "left", "", "Alan Kim / The Roanoke Times via AP", "192", "298", "#000000", "", "", "", "");
virginiatechWATN[i-1].body = "
THEN
His leg bleeding badly as he was crudely carried away from the horror of Norris Hall by four law-enforcement officials, senior Kevin Sterne was the subject of the most famous photo from the Virginia Tech massacre.
The iconic image, which came to symbolize the horror of the tragedy, was used on front pages everywhere –- leading many to wonder what had happened to the student in the picture.
NOW
Thankfully, it was a happy ending –- in large part because of Sterne’s quick thinking. Using his training as an Eagle Scout, the 22-year-old electrical engineering student, who had been shot by gunman Seung-Hui Cho in Room 207 of Norris Hall, used an electrical cord to make a tourniquet and stem the bleeding from a wound to his thigh.
\"Scouts are taught to try to control bleeding and to use the tourniquet as a last resort to save your life or the life of somebody else,\" Sterne's former Scoutmaster, Kevin Dolinar, told the Valley Independent newspaper near his hometown near Pittsburgh.
Emergency workers later applied a second tourniquet to his leg and Sterne was rushed to Montgomery Regional Hospital in Blacksburg for surgery.
\"The patient that I took care of was an incredible guy,\" Dr. David Stoeckle, chief of surgery at the hospital, told the newspaper. \"He was bleeding significantly.... He knew he was bleeding to death.\"
Less than a month later, Sterne’s self-awareness meant that he could be present at the commencement ceremony at Virginia Tech’s College of Engineering. Jubilant and full of life, Sterne limped across the stage at the university’s Cassell Coliseum to pick up his degree.
The crowd rose to its feet, the Associated Press reported, and cheered Sterne in one of the most poignant moments of the ceremony. The College of Engineering was hit particularly hard, with 11 students and three professors killed in the shooting.
Other honors followed. In January 2008, President Bush invited Sterne to be a guest as he delivered his State of the Union address at the Capitol in Washington, D.C.
Perhaps most significant, Sterne showed once again that he was not bowed by the tragedy by returning to Virginia Tech in the fall of 2007 to pursue a master's degree in electrical engineering, where he also continues to work at the school's radio station, WUVT-FM, as the chief engineer. He did not return an e-mail and phone message from msnbc.com seeking comment.";
virginiatechWATN[i++] = new Array("","Jamal Albarghouti:
Recorded incident on his cell phone","","http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Photo_StoryLevel/080414/080414-cnn-jamal-12p.standard.jpg","","", "", "", "", "", "left", "", "CNN", "188", "298", "#000000", "", "", "", "");
virginiatechWATN[i-1].body = "
THEN
Within minutes of the Virginia Tech shooting on the morning of April 16, 2007, news networks pulled out all the stops -– sending their top anchors and reporters to cover the tragedy.
NBC’s Brian Williams, CBS’s Katie Couric and ABC’s Charles Gibson all descended on Blacksburg in time for evening broadcasts, and cable channels such as CNN, Fox and MSNBC provided wall-to-wall coverage.
But perhaps the biggest media star on the scene was Jamal Albarghouti, a Virginia Tech graduate student who captured scenes from the Norris Hall shootings, including the eerie sound of gunfire, on his cell-phone camera.
Albarghouti had been walking to a meeting with an adviser when the gunman, Seung-Hui Cho, began the second phase of his rampage. The civil-engineering specialist told CNN that he was only about 200 feet from Norris Hall, where the most deadly part of the shootings occurred.
\"When I saw the policemen taking their guns out,” he continued, “then I knew that this was serious.\"
Albarghouti took cover on the ground as ordered by the officers and then had the presence of mind to pull out his cell phone to shoot video.
Soon after, Albarghouti sent the footage to CNN.com, using its I-Report feature, in which people can submit photos and videos of news events.
Very quickly, editors at the Web site passed on the video to its parent cable channel, where it was shown repeatedly, prominently labeled as a “CNN exclusive.”
In addition, CNN immediately signed up Albarghouti -- for an undisclosed sum -- as an on-the-scene correspondent, and he was interviewed many times by anchors from the channel. That evening he told CNN personality Larry King that he felt it was ironic to have left the dangerous streets of the Middle East -- he is a Palestinian from the West Bank -- to come to an apparently safe town, only to witness carnage. He later said that he still considered the town to be safe.
NOW
After his brief brush with fame, Albarghouti returned to his studies at Virginia Tech, and at the beginning of the new academic year he was once again back on campus to pursue his specialty. (Albarghouti did not return a call and an e-mail from msnbc.com seeking comment; however, Mark Owczarski, director of university relations, confirmed that his presence on Virginia Tech’s online database means he is still enrolled at the college.)
And the phone that captured the terror of the shootings? It is now on display at the recently reopened Newseum, a $450 million institution in Washington, D.C., devoted to the practice of journalism.
According to Virginia’s Richmond Times newspaper, Albarghouti’s phone -- which he donated to the museum -- is on display as an example of grass-roots digital newsgathering.
";
virginiatechWATN[i++] = new Array("","Charles Steger:
Virginia Tech president","","http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Photo_StoryLevel/080411/080410-va-tech-steger1.standard.jpg","","", "", "", "", "", "left", "Jacquelyn Martin", "AP", "239", "298", "#000000", "", "", "", "");
virginiatechWATN[i-1].body = "
THEN
When Seung-Hui Cho murdered 32 people on the campus of Virginia Tech on April 16, 2007, eyes quickly turned to the university’s president, Charles Steger, who had assumed the post in 2000.
Lots of questions were being asked: Why hadn’t the campus been locked down after the first pair of shootings? How had a mentally ill person like Cho been able to slip through the cracks to the point where he could execute his deadly rampage?
In the days immediately following the tragedy, it seemed possible that Steger might not retain his post at the university, of which he was a graduate and where he also received his master's and doctoral degrees in architecture.
It also fell on Steger to rally the grieving student body and staff, which were reeling from the worst peacetime shooting in American history.
NOW
Steger remains president of Virginia Tech.
He survived the crisis in large part, observers say, because of his overall competency, insider status and long history at the college. A native of Virginia, he has spent his entire career at the university, rising from instructor (where he won two teaching-excellence awards), academic department head, college dean (the youngest dean of any U.S. college of architecture), vice president and then president.
He has also been an effective fundraiser, a key part of any top college official’s job. As vice president, for example, he guided a six-year campaign that exceeded its $250 million goal by $87 million.
Steger also showed a steady hand in the immediate aftermath of the killings, talking with investigators and media, visiting wounded students and attending funerals.
The day before classes resumed, about a week after the massacre, the Associated Press reported, Steger was greeted on campus by a group of students who hugged him and presented him with Virginia Tech banners and posters.
“I’m overwhelmed by the support,” he told them. “It is amazing how strong and how resilient the Hokie nation is.”
“Nobody could have known what was going to happen,” said student Jesse Johnson, 28, who spent the week collecting signatures in support of the administration. “People in the media were calling for Steger ... to step down. Well, that’s an attack against our school, too, and we weren’t happy with that.”
Steger also received backing from the state’s popular governor, Tim Kaine.
“Charlie has been acting as a very, very good president,” Kaine said soon after the shootings. “This kind of event could happen anywhere on any campus, and there has been an innocence taken away from the students. But the positive values, and academic tradition of this university will help the community stay strong, and keep this university attracting students.”
Steger once again came into the spotlight when Kaine’s panel investigating the tragedy delivered its report in August 2007. But while the panel had criticism over the university’s response and security policies, it reserved most of its ire for the system that had allowed a troubled student such as Cho to slip under the radar and to purchase guns legally.
Today, Steger, who turns 61 in June 2008, is overseeing ongoing initiatives to bolster campus security, including new measures to ensure that students with problems similar to Cho’s do not slip though the system.
“We've added 11 more police, sworn officers, to our staff,” he told the Richmond Times-Union recently, “and the counseling capacity has been increased significantly, and of course I think the awareness of the faculty and the programs, protocols and all that, like the Care Team and the Threat Assessment Teams, all those items have been enhanced.”
";
virginiatechWATN[i++] = new Array("","Zach Petkewicz:
Led effort to save class from gunman","","http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Photo_StoryLevel/080414/080414-Petkewicz-hmed-12p.standard.jpg","","", "", "", "", "", "left", "", "NBC News", "224", "298", "#000000", "", "", "", "");
virginiatechWATN[i-1].body = "
THEN
When Virginia Tech gunman Seung-Hui Cho started on his rampage through Norris Hall, a large teaching block at the center of campus, staff and students were confused and fearful as they heard the screams and shots coming from hallways and classrooms.
Among them was Zach Petkewicz, a 21-year-old senior from Smithfield, Va., who became one of the most visible heroes to emerge from the tragedy.
\"I crouched down like everybody else,\" he told Matt Lauer two days later on NBC’s TODAY show. \"I got behind the teacher’s podium. Initially it was just fear.\"
That fear, though, was to turn into action that was credited with saving many lives.
“Eventually, the gunshots got closer,\" said Petkewicz, who then looked at the door of Room 205.
It struck him that \"there’s nothing stopping him from coming in here. We were just sitting ducks.\"
Galvanized to action, Petkewicz grabbed a table and urged his computer-science classmates to help him shove it against the door. Students stood at each end of the table holding it to the cinderblock walls around the door frame.
The gunman, his bloody work done in the classroom next door, \"tried the door handle\" Petkewicz said. Finding the door blocked, he threw his shoulder against it, forcing it open six inches.
Petkewicz and his fellow students pushed back as Cho emptied a clip through the door. They heard him reload, but \"he didn’t try to get back in the second time,\" he told Lauer. Instead, the killer moved down the hall in search of easier victims.
NOW
Uninjured in the tragedy, Petkewicz was soon featured in dozens of news stories and spoke to many news outlets, including a trip to New York City to appear on TODAY.
He also received accolades from his fraternity, the Virginia Zeta Chapter of Sigma Alpha Epsilon, which recognized “Brother Zach Petkewicz, who has recounted his story on several national news programs regarding the action he took in Norris Hall on April 16.
“Zach led other classmates in a successful effort to barricade the door using tables,” the fraternity’s citation read. “The gunman fired shots through the door and partially came through, but Zach and two other classmates forced the gunman back into the hallway.
“Realizing entry was unlikely, he moved on. Soon after, the police entered and cornered the suspect, who, in a final act of cowardice, took his own life.”
Less than a month later the math major went on to collect his undergraduate degree -- and then it was time to find a job, which he soon did in landing a position as an operations research analyst at the Army Evaluation Center near Norfolk, Va. The center, according to its Web site, evaluates weapons systems used by the U.S. military and has a mission “to plan, support, conduct and provide independent evaluations, assessments, and experiments in order to provide essential information to decision-makers.”
A spokesman for the center, Tom Rheinlander, said Petkewicz declined a request to speak to msnbc.com. An earlier call to Petkewicz’s parents’ home elicited a similar response.
";
virginiatechWATN[i++] = new Array("","Tim Kaine:
Virginia governor","","http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Photo_StoryLevel/080411/080410-va-tech-kaine.standard.jpg","","", "", "", "", "", "left", "", "Ron Sachs / pool via EPA", "298", "205", "#000000", "", "", "", "");
virginiatechWATN[i-1].body = "
THEN
When Seung-Hui Cho unleashed his anger on the campus of Virginia Tech, the state’s Democratic governor, Tim Kaine, was thousands of miles away on a trade mission to Japan and India.
Kaine, who had been elected in late 2005, immediately returned to Virginia and headed to the Blacksburg campus. In a convocation speech the next morning -- given on no rest after an overnight flight from Tokyo -- Kaine told an audience including President Bush that he would appoint a panel of independent law-enforcement officials and other experts to examine what the university knew about Cho and how it dealt with his rampage.
The commission, which included former homeland security Secretary Tom Ridge, began work on April 28, 2007, and issued its findings and recommendations on Aug. 30.
On April 30, Kaine signed an executive order instructing state agencies to step up efforts to block gun sales to people involuntarily committed to inpatient and outpatient mental health treatment centers.
NOW
Kaine’s speedy response to the tragedy and the action he took in its immediate aftermath was looked on favorably by most Virginians, who had elected him to office by a comfortable margin.
The tragedy also helped shine a brighter national spotlight on the rising figure in the Democratic Party. (Kaine had already been chosen to give the Democrats’ response to President Bush’s 2006 State of the Union address.)
In fact, his youthful appeal and position as governor of a Southern state have led to much speculation that he might be chosen as a vice presidential candidate, in particular for Sen. Barack Obama. Kaine didn’t hurt his chances in this regard in his claim that he was the first official outside Illinois to endorse Obama.
";
virginiatechWATN[i++] = new Array("","Derek O'Dell:
Wounded, he helped block classroom door","","http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Photo_StoryLevel/080411/080410-va-tech-odell.standard.jpg","","", "", "", "", "", "left", "", "Nina Berman / Redux", "298", "199", "#000000", "", "", "", "");
virginiatechWATN[i-1].body = "
THEN
When the many tales of heroism emerged from the Virginia Tech massacre, the media, as it usually does, picked on handful of students and staff whose stories were the most compelling. They also tended to publicize those who were willing to talk about their experiences.
One of those was Derek O’Dell, whose story of being wounded by the gunman before he and others leaped into action to prevent Cho from re-entering to continue his rampage was widely reported across the world.
O’Dell, a dean’s list student and president of the university’s chess club, was in an early-morning German class in Room 207 of Norris Hall when Cho came in and started shooting indiscriminately.
According to news reports, O’Dell at first assumed the attack was a prank.
\"And then I saw the blood,\" he told the New York Post. It was pouring from the head of a classmate. \"And I knew it wasn't a joke.\"
His instinct was to dive under his desk, a move that probably saved his life.
\"We heard people gurgling blood,\" he told the Post. \"Horrible,\" he said. \"Horrible.\"
As he watched blood flow along the classroom floor, the Post continued, it took O’Dell several minutes to realize that some of it was his. A bullet had torn through his arm.
Then Cho left. That’s when O’Dell and several other students sprang into action.
The door opened inward to the classroom, so O’Dell wedged his foot under it so the killer could not get back inside.
While bullets flew for some 10 minutes, four students –- usually listed as O'Dell, Trey Perkins, Katelyn Carney and Erin Sheehan -- took turns barricading the door.
Then Cho came back. He pushed against the door, getting it open an inch. But O’Dell shoved it back, according to the Post.
Cho then let off five or six rounds into the door. The bullets missed.
Still holding the door shut, O'Dell fashioned a tourniquet with his belt to stop the bleeding in his arm.
Then, the gunman came back a third time. \"He could hear us talking,\" O’Dell told the Post. But this time, he could not get the door open at all.
So he shot another round or two into the door and left. No one was hit. Within minutes, Cho was dead and emergency officials swarmed the building.
NOW
O’Dell, who had celebrated his 20th birthday three days before the shootings, was immediately hospitalized, but it turned out his injuries were relatively minor and he was soon released to his parents in nearby Roanoke County.
\"He's doing OK psychologically and physically,\" Roger O'Dell, his father, told the Roanoke Times three days after the shooting. \"It looks like the bullet hole wound is already healing up a little bit. The bleeding has mostly stopped, so that's good too. He wasn't hit in a major artery or nerves.\"
Added Joanne Hawley, Derek's mother: \"We're so grateful just to have him here with us. He's a special kid.\"
And just a couple of weeks later, O'Dell attended his first class after the shooting -- a meeting of the same German class in which he had been injured. Just two or three of his classmates joined him.
He told the Roanoake Times that it would almost be an insult to their slain professor, Jamie Bishop, not to continue what he started.
In the fall, O’Dell returned to the campus as a junior, continuing his studies in biological sciences. He also resumed his chess activities, and in March 2008 he tied for first place in the Virginia Tech Open.
The same month, he was on hand when the New York Yankees played an exhibition game on the campus and visited the memorial to the victims.
\"It's a little bit bittersweet that this is happening,” O’Dell told the Roanoake Times, “but it's nice that the Yankees and Virginia Tech have put this together.\"
O’Dell was also in the news again when it was announced in April 2008 that more than 20 students and their families had accepted a settlement brokered by the state.
\"It will hopefully bring some closure to those who lost a loved one and those injured, especially at this time of year where memories of what happened might be more prevalent for them,\" O'Dell told the Washington Post.
He was also awarded the Sons of the American Revolution Medal for Heroism and was named in GQ as part of the magazine’s Men of the Year feature.
Perhaps it was his brushes with writing and journalism that inspired O’Dell to decide to write a book about his experiences.
\"It'll have a wide sort of theme on it,” he told WDBJ, a Virginia TV station, about the project, “looking at school shootings in general and trying to prevent them as much as you can prevent something like that.”
He said he and a cousin, a journalist in Arizona, are doing the writing, which O’Dell said would also contain information from experts from around the nation.
“The shootings that happened last April are definitely a life-changing experience,” he told msnbc.com, “but it is hopefully something that will not define me.
“As a result of what happened, I’ve developed a new appreciation for the everyday blessings of life.”
And while O’Dell defends those who chose not to speak to the media -- either at the time or since -- he says that doing all of the interviews helped him.
“It was ... almost like free counseling,” he continued. “Hopefully doing the interviews will also bring light to many of the issues that need to be addressed as a result of the shootings, [such as] mental health reform, campus safety [and] gun law restrictions.”";
virginiatechWATN[i++] = new Array("","The Cho family:
Kin of gunman","","","","", "", "", "", "", "", "Carlo Allegri", "Getty Images file", "250", "200", "", "", "", "", "");
virginiatechWATN[i-1].body = "
THEN
In the immediate aftermath of the Virginia Tech massacre, much attention was focused on the family of the 23-year-old gunman, Seung-Hui Cho, as people wondered what in his background might have sparked his deadly rampage.
After Cho was revealed to have been the killer, an army of media descended on his parents’ home in Centreville, Va., a far-flung suburb of Washington, D.C., where his parents, immigrants from South Korea, worked at a nearby dry-cleaning business.
By that time, however, Sung-Tae and Hyang-Im Cho and their daughter, Sun-Kyung, had left their townhouse after FBI agents had informed them of their son’s death and his role as the killer.
“[T]here were tears right away,” an agent who was present told the Washington Post recently.
\"It was extremely difficult,\" the agent continued. \"I had to tell a family that their son was gone and that he was also responsible for this horrific tragedy.\" (The agent talked to the paper on condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the case.)
After a few days, the family released a statement, written by their daughter, a graduate of Princeton who worked as a contractor for the State Department. Saying that the family was “living a nightmare,” it went on to say that the family “is so very sorry for my brother’s unspeakable actions.”
Naming all 32 victims, the statement said: “We pray for their families and loved ones who are experiencing so much excruciating grief. And we pray for those who were injured and for those whose lives are changed forever because of what they witnessed and experienced.”
NOW
After the release of the statement, nothing more was heard from the Chos. Their home apparently abandoned, news crews gradually left the cul-de-sac where they lived. Neighbors and others speculated that they had fled permanently, perhaps even to South Korea.
The Chos, though, eventually did come back. According to neighbors interviewed by the Washington Post, the family quietly returned to Centreville after several months, and the parents resumed their dry-cleaning work.
\"They continue to live in darkness,\" said Wade Smith, a North Carolina lawyer who has been representing the family and released their post-tragedy statement. \"I think there will come a time when they are able to speak,” he told the newspaper, “[but] for now, they have made it clear to me they just want to be quiet and not say anything.\"
This silence also extends to family and friends in South Korea. \"I understand why she never called us, even once, since the incident,\" Kim Yang Soon, Cho's great-aunt, told the Washington Post. \"It must be too shameful and painful for her to say anything now.\"
The family, however, did talk to the panel appointed by Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine to look into the tragedy, and were forthcoming about their son, according to people quoted by the Post.
In an emotional three-hour interview, according to the Post, Hyang-Im described her struggle to socialize her son, who rarely spoke as a child in South Korea and withdrew even more after the family came to the United States when he was 8.
Had they known about his violent writings and strange behavior, the parents told Dr. Aradhana A. \"Bela\" Sood, a member of the Virginia Tech review panel, \"we would have taken him home and made him miss a semester to get this looked at. But we just did not know ... about anything being wrong.\"
Translating for them was Sun Kyung, 27, who still works for the State Department at its Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor.
";
// END editorial data