Communication Breakdown Doomed Va. Tech

Virginia Tech officials could have saved lives if they had quickly issued a campuswide warning that two students had been shot to death in a dormitory and their killer was on the loose, a panel that investigated the attacks said.

Instead, it took administrators more than two hours to get a strongly worded e-mail out to the students and staff. The shooter had time to leave the dorm, mail a letter, and then return to the classroom building where he chained the doors shut and killed 31 more people, including himself.

The report also faults university officials for failing to identify Seung-Hui Cho, two years ago, as an emerging danger, reports CBS News correspondent Bob Orr.

Professors complained of his violent writings, female students accused him of stalking, and his roommates reported suicide threats.

But the information was not widely shared, adds Orr.

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine formally accepted the report Thursday. "It is comprehensive and thorough, objective and in many cases hard-hitting, and it is fair," he said.

But one victim's mother urged Kaine to "show some leadership" and fire the university's president and campus police chief for their lack of action during the April 16 attack. Others demanded accountability for errors that were made.

Kaine, however, told The Associated Press that the school's officials had suffered enough without losing their jobs.

"This is not something where the university officials, faculty, administrators have just been very blithe," Kaine said Thursday. "There has been deep grieving about this, and it's torn the campus up."

"I want to fix this problem so I can reduce the chance of anything like this ever happening again," he said. "If I thought firings would be the way to do that, then that would be what I would focus on."

The report also revealed that victims' relatives were not well cared for in the days after the shootings, adds Orr.

The eight-member panel, appointed by Kaine, spent four months investigating the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

"Warning the students, faculty and staff might have made a difference," it wrote in a report released Wednesday night. "So the earlier and clearer the warning, the more chance an individual had of surviving."

The first victims were shot shortly after 7 a.m. It wasn't until 9:26 a.m. that the school sent an e-mail to students and faculty warning: "Shooting on campus. The university community is urged to be cautious and are asked to contact Virginia Tech Police if you observe anything suspicious or with information on the case." Cho opened fire inside Norris Hall about 20 minutes later.

The panel's chairman, Gerald Massengill, told the AP on Thursday: "The alert should have been issued and classes should have been closed. If those students had been given a heads-up, then they could maybe have made some decisions that they didn't have an opportunity to make."

But the report also concluded that, while swifter warnings might have helped students and faculty, a lockdown of the 131 buildings on campus would not have been feasible. And while the first message sent by the university could have gone out at least an hour earlier and been more specific, Cho likely still would have found more people to kill, it said.

"There does not seem to be a plausible scenario of a university response to the double homicide that could have prevented the tragedy of considerable magnitude on April 16," the report said. "Cho had started on a mission of fulfilling a fantasy of revenge."

The report detailed a breakdown in communication about the gunman, who had shown signs of mental health problems for years.

However, the report said it was impossible to understand why he chose the particular date and site of his rampage, Orr reports.

His middle school teachers had found signs of suicidal and homicidal thoughts in his writings after the Columbine High School shootings in 1999. He received psychiatric counseling and was on medication for a short time. In 2006, he wrote a paper for his Virginia Tech creative writing class about a young man who hates students at his school and plans to kill them and himself, the report said.

The university's counseling center failed to give Cho the support he needed despite the warnings, including his referral to the center in 2005 because of bizarre behavior and concerns he was suicidal, the panel said. It blamed a lack of resources, misinterpretation of privacy laws and passivity.

Individuals and departments at Virginia Tech were aware of incidents that suggested his mental instability, but "did not intervene effectively. No one knew all the information and no one connected all the dots," the report said.

The report said the response by university and Blacksburg police to the dormitory shootings was well coordinated, and said the police response at Norris Hall was "prompt and effective," as was triage and evacuation of the wounded.

But it also noted that university police may have erred in prematurely concluding that the first two shootings were the result of a domestic dispute.

Celeste Peterson, whose freshman daughter, Erin, was killed, said the governor should show he won't "let stuff go" and fire university president Charles Steger and campus police Chief Wendell Flinchum.

"This is his opportunity to step up and do the right thing," she said Thursday.

In Virginia, university presidents serve at the pleasure of the Board of Visitors, which is appointed by the governor. Campus police chiefs are accountable to the university president.

Peterson said Steger had used her child's name and the names of the other victims to raise funds for the university, yet never called to express his condolences. The only call she received was from an administrative assistant, proposing days for a phone conversation.

"That's rude," Peterson said. Now, "I really don't have anything to say to him. The only thing I can possibly say to him is, 'When are you going to step down?"'

Cathy Read, stepmother of slain freshman Mary Karen Read, agreed that "university leadership" should be held accountable.

"As you read the report, it's clear that so many of the mistakes that were made result from a failure of leadership at the very top levels of the university," Read said.

William O'Neil, father of slain graduate student Daniel O'Neil, said: "I think it's outrageous, in what I've read of the report so far, that no one is held accountable. With the exception, of course, of Cho. No one from the university is held accountable."

Holly Sherman, whose daughter Leslie was killed, said the report's findings were what she expected, including "a number of critical errors in judgment."

"At Virginia Tech, he exhibited seriously deviant behavior that went unchecked, and the faculty did not take adequate steps to put him in check," she wrote in an e-mail to The AP.

Diane Strollo, whose daughter Hilary was shot and survived, said she was thankful the panel recognized that an earlier warning could have derailed Cho's plans for Norris Hall.

"Had some or all of the student body been notified that two students were gunned down that morning, they may have had heightened sensitivity to the sound of gunshots and other suspicious activity," Strollo wrote in an e-mail to the AP. "One or two minutes of notice may have been critical in saving more lives in Norris Hall."

On the Blacksburg campus Thursday, students, professors and employees generally were supportive of the administration.

"If someone's crazy, you can't stop them," said Raffaella Devita, an engineering professor who was in Norris Hall the day of the shooting.

Gene Cole, a custodian at Norris, said he dodged five shots from Cho and escaped uninjured.

"I think the cops did all they could do," he said. "They didn't really know what was going on either."

Cole said he had seen Cho at Norris Hall previously and did not suspect he was a troubled person until the day of the shooting.

"He was kind of wild looking that day," he said.

While many students declined to comment as they hurried to class, those who did said administrators faced a difficult decision.

"I think probably they could have done something sooner," said Talesha Thompson, a senior from Virginia Beach, Va. "But they didn't want chaos on campus."