Shooting stuns students

Bonnie Henrickson points out Tech’s similarities to KU

By Erick Schmidt

Published on Tue., April 17th, 2007

Just hours after Monday’s deadly shootings on the campus of Virginia Tech, Matt Drake’s phone was flooded with calls from family members.

“Everyone wanted to know if I had heard,” said Drake, a Woodbridge, Va., graduate student who earned his undergraduate degree from Virginia Tech last May. “Everyone I know is OK to this point.”

Drake said he arrived to work on campus at 7:30 Monday morning and began receiving calls about an hour later.

“I’m just dumbfounded, speechless,” Drake said. “It makes me realize something like that can happen anywhere.”

Kansas women’s basketball coach Bonnie Henrickson spent 14 years of her coaching career at Virginia Tech, including the seven years before she came to Kansas in 2004. She said the Virginia Tech campus was similar to the University of Kansas campus.

“It’s a safe place, it really is,” Henrickson said. “It just shows you what a scary world we live in.”

Henrickson, who was in her office when she was told about the shootings, said she immediately called current Virginia Tech women’s basketball coach Beth Dunkenberger to make sure she was all right.

“She said, ‘You can’t possibly imagine what it’s like right now,’” Henrickson said. “The senselessness is just hard to grasp. It’s tough to watch.”

Christopher Grey, a sophomore at Virginia Tech, told The University Daily Kansan he saw SWAT members surrounding the building where the second round of shootings occurred, but that he didn’t think much about it.

“We’ve had two false bomb threats lately, and I just thought of that,” Grey said. “I just walked in and sat down.”

For the next two hours, Grey and six others, including a professor, were locked in their classroom across the street. They watched the scene unfold as “police car after police car” and “ambulance after ambulance showed up and sped off,” Grey said.

When the classroom was finally unlocked, Grey returned to his on-campus residence hall and began watching news coverage.

“It’s pretty depressing to see the death toll rise. Just incredible,” Grey said.

He said all of his friends were so far accounted for.

“I honestly never thought anything of this magnitude would happen anywhere, not just on campus,” Grey said. “It always just felt so secure.”

Joshua Nold, Auburn, Kan., junior, said the news immediately reminded him of the Columbine High School attack in 1999.

“It makes you wonder if it was someone going through misfit stuff,” Nold said. “That’s not the type of thing you think goes on in college.”

Nold said he would never expect anything similar to happen at the University.

“Lawrence seems like too peaceful a place. That’s probably the same way they felt out there in Virginia, though,” Nold said.

Kansan staff writer Erick R. Schmidt can be contacted at eschmidt@kansan.com.

— Edited by Joe Caponio

Discussion

The Kansan.com staff reviews comments regularly. Please be respectful of your peers. For our full user policy, click here.

Headlines

Video