Gov. Tim Kaine plans to meet Saturday in Richmond with family members of victims of the April 16 shootings at Virginia Tech.
 
Thomas Fadoul, a lawyer who says he represents 20 of the 32 victims families, announced a press conference for this afternoon in Washington, D.C., about the upcoming meeting.
 
Kaine spokesman Kevin Hall said the meeting between Kaine and the families is private and its time and location will not be made public.
 
Kaine announced the meeting Wednesday, after relatives of 13 victims called for more involvement on a panel he established to investigate the actions of authorities April 16 and how mental issues of the shooter, Seung-Hui Cho, were addressed before the shootings.
 
Not all victims’ families plan to attend the Saturday meeting.
 
“The governor has reached out to us and we don’t plan to meet with him right now because there’s not an issue that we feel we need to bring up specifically right now. But that’s not saying we won’t in the future,” Renee Cloyd, who lost her daughter Austin in the shootings, said last week.
 
Hall said Kaine “has been in touch with most of the families by phone or e-mail, some of them multiple times. The meeting is simply an effort to continue that personal contact, answer any questions about the status of the independent review and diffuse what Mr. Fadoul would characterize, accurately or inaccurately, as some concerns among some family members.”
 
Hall said the decision not to allow family members on the panel had not changed but “that doesn’t mean, however, that there couldn’t be other ways to facilitate more consistent family awareness of the day-to-day actives of the review panel and staff.”