A Time To Mourn

Virginia Tech Turns Away From Gruesome Video Of Killer To Remember The Fallen

(CBS/AP)  Virginia Tech on Thursday turned away from gruesome video images of mass killer Cho Seung-Hui to mourn the victims of his shooting rampage.

University officials announced that Cho's victims would be awarded their degrees posthumously. The mourning for the fallen students and faculty continued on campus and elsewhere in the United States.

Memorial services were held around the nation, with many conducted on college campuses. Nearly 3,000 students, for example, gathered at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green for a vigil that included a banner that read, "Today We Are All Hokies."

Donations also poured in for the families of the victims. In Atlanta, Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick, who went to college at Virginia Tech, teamed up with the United Way to donate $10,000 to help the families.

A Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund has been set up by Virginia Tech for donations http://www.vt.edu/tragedy/memorial_fund.php. The fund will help to underwrite memorials, grief counseling and related expenses.

In New York, a Holocaust survivor who escaped the Nazi killings to become a world-class scientist was remembered Wednesday as a hero for saving his Virginia Tech students from a rampaging gunman.

Witnesses said Liviu Librescu blocked the door to his classroom with his body so students could escape the assailant by jumping out windows. The 76-year-old professor was shot to death, one of the shooter's 32 victims.

The neighborhood's Jewish community volunteered to hold the service before Librescu's remains were flown to Israel for burial.

Also on Wednesday, students fell silent, restaurant patrons cringed and mothers turned their children away from the television as NBC aired the first videos of the 23-year-old gunman.

The decision by NBC and other media organizations to air the video prompted some criticism. Virginia State Police Col. Steve Flaherty said he was disappointed that NBC decided to broadcast parts of it.

"I just hate that a lot of people not used to seeing that type of image had to see it," he said.

On NBC's "Today" show Thursday, host Meredith Vieira said the decision to air the information "was not taken lightly." Some victims' relatives canceled their plans to speak with NBC because they were upset over the airing of the images, she said.

"I saw his picture on TV, and when I did I just got chills," said Kristy Venning, a junior from Franklin County, Va. "There's really no words. It shows he put so much thought into this, and I think it's sick."

"Today" show Matt Lauer said the decision to air the information "was not taken lightly."

CBS News and other major media organizations also used the Cho video and still pictures taken from the video.

The following is a confirmed list of victims in Monday's shooting spree:

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Ross Abdallah Alameddine, 20, of Saugus, Mass., according to his mother, Lynnette Alameddine. Friends described the sophomore majoring in English, business information technology and French as "an intelligent, funny, easy-going guy."

Christopher James "Jamie" Bishop, 35, taught German at Virginia Tech and helped oversee an exchange program with a German university. According to his Web site, Bishop, a Fulbright scholar at Christian-Albrechts University in Kiel, spent four years living in Germany, where he "spent most of his time learning the language, teaching English, drinking large quantities of wheat beer, and wooing a certain fraulein" — the "fraulein" being Bishop's wife, Stephanie Hofer, who also teaches in Virginia Tech's German program.

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Click here for an interactive gallery of the victims.

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Brian Bluhm, 25, a master's student in water resources, received his undergraduate degree in civil engineering at Tech and was getting ready to defend his thesis. He already had accepted a job in Baltimore. Bluhm grew up in Detroit and was an avid Detroit Tigers fan; his death was announced before Tuesday's game against Kansas City, which Detroit went on to win 7-6. "He went to a game last weekend and saw them win, and I'm glad he did," said Bluhm's close friend, Michael Marshall of Richmond, Va. Marshall said it was his faith and work with the Baptist Collegiate Ministries that his friend would foremost want to be remembered by.

Ryan Clark, 22, a student from Martinez, Ga., was a fifth-year student working toward a triple degree in psychology, biology and English and carrying a 4.0 grade-point average. He was a member of the Marching Virginians band and a resident assistant at Ambler Johnson Hall, the dorm where the first shootings took place. "He was just one of the greatest people you could possibly know," friend Gregory Walton, 25, said. "He was always smiling, always laughing. I don't think I ever saw him mad in the five years I knew him."

Austin Cloyd, 18, a freshman, was an international studies major. She moved to Blacksburg for her senior year in high school; her father is C. Bryan Cloyd, a professor of accounting and information systems at Virginia Tech. She was so inspired by an Appalachian service project that helped rehab homes that she and her mother started a similar program in their Illinois town, her former pastor said. The Rev. Terry Harter of First United Methodist Church in Champaign, Ill., described Cloyd as a "very delightful, intelligent, warm young lady" and an athlete who played basketball and volleyball in high school. But it was the mission trips to Appalachia that showed just how caring and faithful she was, he said.

Jocelyne Couture-Nowak, a French instructor at Virginia Tech, was instrumental in the push to create the first French school in Truro, Nova Scotia, where she lived in the 1990s with her husband, Jerzy Nowak. He is the head of the horticulture department at Virginia Tech.

Peruvian student Daniel Perez Cueva, a 21-year-old international relations major, was killed while in his French class, said his mother, Betty Cueva. He grew up playing soccer on a potholed street outside his family's apartment in the crime-ridden Bellavista neighborhood the port district of Lima, Peru. He came to the United States with his mother and his sister Vanesa, who is married to a soldier now fighting in Iraq. "He dreamed of coming to Virginia Tech because of its prestige and he did it," his mother Betty told Peruvian radio station RPP by phone from Virginia. "For my children, I've made it through the good times and the bad in this country ... and we've worked it out little by little, until this happened."