Alejandra Campero: GUNMAN SLAYS 32 AT US CAMPUS

(Buenos Aires Herald, April 18th edition)

Students said there were no public-address announcements or other warnings on campus until an e-mail more than two hours after the first shooting — around the time the gunman struck again.Virginia Tech president Charles Steger said authorities believed that the shooting at the dormitory was a domestic dispute and mistakenly thought the gunman had fled the campus. ‘‘We had no reason to suspect any other incident was going to occur,’’ he said.He defended the university’s handling of the tragedy, saying, ‘‘We can only make decisions based on the information you had at the time. You don’t have hours to reflect on it.’’Investigators offered no motive for the attack. The gunman’s name was not immediately released, and it was not known if he was a student. At an evening news conference, the university president and police chief said they were still investigating whether the shootings were related. But earlier in the day, the chief said he believed there was only one gunman.The shootings spread panic and confusion on campus, with witnesses reporting students jumping out of classroom windows to escape the gunfire. Students and faculty members carried out some of the wounded themselves, without waiting for ambulances to arrive. Police said some doors in the classroom building had been chained shut from the inside, possibly by the gunman.‘‘Schools should be places of safety, sanctuary and learning,’’ President George W. Bush said. ‘‘When that sanctuary is violated, the impact is felt in every American classroom in every American community.’’The bloodbath took place at opposite sides of the thousand-hectare campus, beginning at West Ambler Johnston, a coed residence hall, and continuing about two hours later at Norris Hall, an engineering building.Two people were killed in a dormitory room, and 31 others were killed in the engineering building, including the gunman, police said.Steger said the university decided to rely on e-mail and other electronic means to notify members of the university, but with 11,000 people driving onto campus in the morning, it was difficult to reach everyone. He said that before the e-mail went out, the university began telephoning resident advisers in the dorms to notify them and sent people to knock on doors to spread the word. (AP) PERSONAL REACTION:
Sadly, it is not the first time that something of the kind happens in a school or an university, and not only at the U.S.A but also in our country it has happened. There is a common factor in the majority of these tragic events: a young person, who is influenced by a movie or a video game. These people tend to be shine in their everyday life; they spend hours and hours in front of a computer playing with video games aimed to violence, crimes and brutality. They are of course psychologically sick and one day they decide to go out and pretend to be the video game character, so they kill anyone who is in front of them. They also can be influenced by movies in which the principal character commits a crime, and they imitate it, so they commit the same crime copying the movie.