Va. Tech shooter had no ties to the university

Updated 10:52 p.m. ET

BLACKSBURG, Va. - A dean's list student who killed a Virginia Tech police officer had no ties to the university and did not know the patrolman, authorities said Friday without offering a motive for a crime spree that spanned two days and ended in suicide.

Ross Truett Ashley, 22, first drew authorities' attention when he robbed his landlord's office at gunpoint Wednesday. He took the keys to a Mercedes-Benz sport utility vehicle later found in Blacksburg, home to Virginia Tech, about 10 miles away.

Ashley, a part-time business student at Radford University, was described by those who knew him as a typical college student, though he could be quiet and standoffish. He liked to run down the hallways and recently shaved his head, a neighbor said.

Police said he walked up to officer Deriek W. Crouse on Thursday and shot him to death as the patrolman sat in his unmarked cruiser in the midst of a traffic stop. Ashley was not involved in the stop and did not know the driver, police said.

Ashley then took off for the campus greenhouses, ditching his pullover, wool cap and backpack as police sent out a campus-wide alert that a gunman was on the loose, terrorizing students on a campus still coping with the nation's worst mass slaying in recent memory.

A deputy sheriff on patrol noticed a man acting suspicious 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.

Ashley lived in an apartment on top floor of a gray, three-story brick building that looked a little beaten up on the outside.

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."

Ashley's apartment was above a yogurt shop, consignment store, barber shop and a tattoo parlor. It overlooked the business section of Radford's main drag.

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Neighbor Nan Forbes, a Radford senior, said he was rarely seen or heard from. She said she knew he was in trouble when she saw two police officers guarding the door to Ashley's apartment

"It does freak us out because we live in this building, but there was not one peep of trouble, nothing unusual," she said.

Ashley made the dean's list in 2008 at the University of Virginia-Wise, which is located in southwest Virginia. Officials at Radford or UVA-Wise were not immediately able to talk in detail about Ashley.

Crouse, 39, the slain officer, 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.

Ironically, Crouse was killed across the street from the dormitory where the 2007 massacre began, reports CBS News correspondent Elaine Quijano. He was to be buried at a memorial service Monday.

8 Photos

Students report Va. Tech shooting

At the Virginia Tech campus, thousands of people silently filled the Drillfield for a candlelight vigil Friday night to remember Crouse.

Vigil held for slain Va. Tech police officer

The vigil included a moment of silence and later closed with two trumpeters stationed across the field from each other playing "Echo Taps" as students raised their candles.

"Let's go!" one student then shouted. "Hokies!" everyone else responded.

Kathleen O'Dwyer, a fifth-year engineering majors, said it was important to come for Crouse's family.

"Also it's for the community, to see the violence that happens isn't what we're about," said O'Dwyer, who will be graduating next week.

Her plans when she leaves school?

"First, go home and hug my mom," O'Dwyer said.

Nobody answered the door at Ashley's parents' home in Spotsylvania County in the northern part of the state. The house was dark and no vehicles were in the driveway. The two-story, log cabin-style home in a semi-rural area sits about 200 yards off the road up a narrow gravel drive.

Billie Jo Phillippe, who lives three houses down, said she didn't really associate with the family.

"They stay off to themselves a lot," she said. "He was a clean-cut young guy but standoffish."

"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."

[bizzvanwa]

This is one of the scariest stories about random shootings I've ever seen. Here you had a young man who did well in school and got along with people. Then, this. To me, it says that because of all the campus (college and high school) shootings that have come before, many kids grow up already thinking of random shootings plus suicide by gun as a common form of ending their misery--whatever it may be. The more it happens, the more common it becomes. I wish we could make guns hard to get and have laws that let us lock up the criminals who are caught having guns illegally.

[gkay762]

If guns weren't everywhere in this country, senseless murders like this wouldn't be happening. The right wing nuts have simply gone too far and this is a direct result. Once they get an idea in their narrow heads, they shake it to death like a rabid dog. You won't beleive this, Look:
http://******/v7GDm6
They are even give free guns to random people! I'm sorry to say, but I expect more bloodbaths like this in the near future.

[gkay762]

oops, non-shortened link. You won't believe this, it's outrageous!
http://www.armslist.com/contests?utm_source=c000015&utm_medium=plink&utm_campaign=p012361

[gtpillsdotcom]

was he just jealous that he could not get admission to Virginia Tech? gtpillsdotcom

[SantiagoStone]

Thanks to the American Gun Lobby and easy gun ownership, USA has 7.07 gun homicides per 100,000 population per year. Australia with stricter gun control has 0.44 Think about it.

[TotalRecall9]

If cops would "protect & serve" the American people rather than be overbearing thugs that will arrest you if you say "boo" to them, that will get a "slap on the wrist" for doing the same crimes as other people, and that will give you a traffic ticket when they drive faster than you do, then people wouldn't hate them! Most cops are very immoral and corrupt. The thing is that this kind of shooting will make the corrupt, overbearing American Gestapo even worse and many more people will hate them for it.

[chucklin72]

"Ironically, Crouse was killed across the street from the dormitory where the 2007 massacre began"
How is this "ironic"? Coincidental, yes. Ironic, not even close.

[Ni_Hao]

Senseless tragedy. My heart goes out to the families of the officer and this obviously disturbed young man.

[soshaljustice]

Obvious why he did it-real warm place where he lived, his neighbors were as warm as the building itself. They did not know him? Scary. They never sat and talked with him? Sure...people that keep to themselves...want to be left alone? Please all you people on the mainland that think this way, stay there. If you come to Honolulu, you will not like it because plenty strangers of all types and kine will be talking to you, and expect you to talk back, real nice, no attitude or paranoia, like you one friend, rich or poor. If you don't, that's when you have the problems. When people that run up and down the hallways here? We run with them. That's how we make friends in Hawaii. You guys in Virginia sound a little weird to let this guy exist without making friends, in one house. That's sad! That's not good. Not Aloha!

[way_out_there]

I can also make the assumption that perhaps Ashley is the one that made no attempt to get to know his neighbors. Since he was always running down hallways, should the neighbors be obligated to tackle him to ask "hey, we want to get to know you!"???? I lived in Honolulu years ago, and the "locals", in all honesty, did not really jump out of their way to welcome this "haole" unless it was to try and make a tourist buck off of me. There were many bars/hangouts that as a "haole" I would not be welcome at all. Aloha!

[bradoxn]

That STUPID BASTARD saved us a lot of tax dollars.

Creep is in hell now. HOPE YA LIKE THE FLAMES!!!!!!!!!!!

[baileyccc]

Another scumbag taken off the streets, this is a good thing.

[inverse137]

You're kind of a sick individual, did you know that?