= Premium Content

  • Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Previous

Next

Gunman in Virginia Tech Shooting Was Part-Time Student at Radford U.

December 9, 2011, 6:26 pm

[Updated 6:42 p.m.]

The man who shot to death a Virginia Tech police officer on Thursday and then took his own life was a 22-year-old part-time student at nearby Radford University, the Associated Press reports.

The police still have not identified a motive for the actions of Ross Truett Ashley, which threw the Virginia Tech campus into a frenzy of anxiety nearly five years after a shooting spree took 33 lives there.

But the police did report that he stole a sport-utility vehicle at gunpoint on Wednesday and later left it on the Virginia Tech campus. The police also said he did not know the police officer he killed. After shooting the officer, Mr. Ashley ran to a campus greenhouse, where he left a cap, a sweater, and his backpack. He was next spotted in a parking lot, where he committed suicide, the police said.

In a statement posted on its Web site, Radford University said Mr. Ashley was a business-management major from Partlow, Va. The university said the federal student-privacy law known as Ferpa prevented it from releasing any further information about Mr. Ashley.

The police investigation continues, and tonight people on the Virginia Tech campus will gather for a candlelight vigil.

This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.

  • Print
  • Comment
  • Guest

    What a terrible tragedy. I hope the academics who dismissed the reaction by the policeman in Davis as completely unfounded can question their initial reaction. There is danger for people who are called to protect our campuses, and I give them leeway to react swiftly if danger seems imminent. I grieve for this dead man’s family.

  • Guest

    Oh please, Lopez. 

    Your response exhibits terrible logical fallacies, including false comparisons and straw men. You ignorantly conflate these two incidents to serve your odd bias. 

    The UCDavis student protesters were seated with bowed heads when they were sprayed on violently by a campus cop with prior discipline problems. 

    Learn basic logic and reason and return to commenting from an intelligent place.

  • tptrekker

    Usually arriving first to leave his mark, Prof. Lopez is characteristically an outlier, often steering the discussion in some direction impertinent to the main thrust of the article. Someone might even designate him a troll. I do concur with him in his professed grief for the family of the dead police officer.

  • jamesebryan

    I’m not a lawyer, but is that familiar buck-passing standby “FERPA won’t let us” really valid here?  My understanding was the dead have no rights – as they have no interests to maintain or livelihoods to secure they cannot be harmed by any damage to their reputations.   If FERPA does prevent the dissemination of information that might assist the living in order to protect the privacy of the dead that is something quite wrong with it.

  • jbfjbf

    Why has no one called for the heads of those in charge of preventing, monitoring and responding to crime at VT?   It is simple to control.  All individuals enter through designated areas.  Legitimate persons on campus inform the guard of an arriving guest.  Guests sign a registration form.  If you were not invited, you do not enter.  Controlling students, faculty and others with I.D. to enter the campus, is of course another matter.  It appears that Mr. Ashley was an uninvited guest who should have been denied access to the campus. 

Copyright 2012. All rights reserved.