Josh Meltzer | The Roanoke Times

West Ambler Johnston Hall on Virginia Tech's campus.

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(Continued...) Police responded to the fourth floor of West AJ. Two victims, later identified as Emily Jane Hilscher and Ryan “Stack” Clark, had been shot.

Rooms were quickly cleared and students were taken down to the third floor as police performed their investigation. Hilscher’s roommate, Heather Haugh, had not been with Hilscher when she was shot. She told police that Hilscher’s boyfriend, Karl Thornhill, owned guns. Haugh had even been to a shooting range with Thornhill. Investigators suspected a lover’s quarrel that turned deadly and set out to locate Thornhill, who lived in a Blacksburg town house.

By 9:30 a.m., word of the dormitory shooting had spread, even though many West AJ students were waking up with no knowledge of a crime scene inside their own hall. Police believed they had good leads. They already had a suspect.

Tech Police Chief Wendell Flinchum briefed university officials on the status of the investigation. At 9:26 a.m., the university sent out a campus wide e-mail alerting students and staff of the incident:

“A shooting occurred at West Ambler Johnston earlier this morning. Police are on the scene and are investigating. 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.”

Fourteen dollars and 40 cents.

That’s the amount the clerk asked for at the small, brick post office on North Main Street, just off campus in downtown Blacksburg. The amount to mail a package to New York City — overnight. The handwriting on the package was scrawled, maybe hurried.

The package was addressed to: NBC 30 Rockefeller Ave.

The ZIP code was wrong. 101102, instead of 10112.

As the return address: A. Ishmael, 88 Revol Dr., Blacksburg, Va. 24060

$14.40.

The time stamp on the package: 9:01 a.m.

Inside, the final compilation — 27 video files on a DVD.

In one of the videos, these spoken words: “This is it. This is where it all ends. End of the road. What a life it was. Some life.”

Video by Craig Kimberley | HamptonRoads.TV

Virginia Tech janitor Gene Cole encountered gunman Cho Seung-Hui in Norris Hall, who fired five shots in Cole's direction. He was not hit. This video gives his first-hand account of that day.

Complete coverage

• See past stories, read profiles on the victims and watch special multimedia packages on the Virginia Tech shootings

About 9:25 a.m., Cole slipped out the back of Norris Hall for his morning smoke.

He had just finished cleaning the men’s bathroom on the third floor, even though that short professor with the foreign accent had interrupted him as soon as he had gotten his mop and bucket out.

It happened every day.

Cole didn’t know professor Liviu Librescu’s name — only that he showed up each morning in an awful hurry.

“I gotta go! I gotta go!” the perky professor shouted cheerfully as he raced by the bucket. He always took time, though, to ask Cole how he was doing before he hustled back down to Norris 204 to teach his solid mechanics class.

“You better slow down,” Cole hollered after him. He finished his cigarette and stepped back into Norris.

His supervisor, Johnny Long, was on the first floor looking for him.

Long fussed at him. Cole had left the door of the third-floor broom closet unlocked.

Long’s warning: You’re going to have to keep the door locked because of these bomb threats. You know, they can make bombs out of these chemicals we keep.

Cole knew about bomb threats that had closed part of the campus on April 2 and again on Friday, April 13. In his years on campus, he had come to expect such things. Student pranks, he reckoned.

He promised Long he would take care of the closet.

He didn’t get the chance.

Suddenly, there was banging, popping, screaming on Norris Hall’s second floor. Someone had a gun. Shots were being fired.

On the first floor, no one knew what was happening overhead. Long told Cole to get upstairs and look for Pam — Pam Tickle, his co-worker, who was cleaning the second floor.

Cole jumped in the elevator and punched a button. When the doors slid open, he began hollering for Pam.

Something on the floor made him stop in his tracks.

He saw some sort of book bag. Beside it, a body.

He inched closer.

The person was quivering. He was sure it was Pam.

Before he could bend down to check, a motion at the corner of his eye caught his attention.

He looked up and spotted a figure standing far down the hallway.

The man had both hands wrapped around a gun, pointed right at him.

Cole had unknowingly walked into a methodical massacre.

Cho was going from room to room.

His killing spree had started in Room 206, professor G.V. Loganathan’s small class of civil engineering students. Without speaking a word, he began firing his Glock and his Walther into his scattering victims.

Survivors say Cho’s near-blank expression didn’t change.

He left the dead and dying behind, moving on to Room 207, a German class taught by Jamie Bishop. Some students ducked under desks as Cho methodically fired and killed.

Then to Room 211, a French class where professor Jocelyne Couture-Nowak had heard the shots and shoved a desk in front of the door. Cho still managed to force his way in, and he delivered another deadly volley of gunfire.

Cho headed back to 207, where three students had pressed themselves against the door, anticipating the gunman’s return. He fired four shots through the wooden door before giving up.

Tech President Charles Steger’s crisis leadership team had assembled in his Burruss Hall office after the West AJ shootings. Campus police had informed the president that they had a suspect.

Just after 9:45 a.m., the meeting was interrupted by a report of another incident. This one was at Norris Hall. As the call sounded over the small radio clipped to Lt. Joey Albert’s lapel, the sound of gunfire was unmistakable to Steger and everyone else in his office.

“I think I need to get out of here and get on the scene,” Albert said.

Soon after, at 9:50 a.m., the university blasted another e-mail alert across campus.

“Subject: please stay put

A gunman is loose on campus. Stay in buildings until further notice. Stay away from all windows.”

The police didn’t have to go far. Norris is next door to Burruss, in the heart of Tech’s sprawling, 2,600-acre campus. (Continued...)

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