Gunman Kills 32 at Virginia Tech In Deadliest Shooting in U.S. History

About 9:50 a.m., Jamal Albarghouti was walking toward Norris Hall for a meeting with his adviser in civil engineering "to review my thesis. As I was walking, about 300 feet away, I started hearing people shouting, telling me to run or [get] clear."

He started to move away, but he also pulled out his cellphone, which has videorecording capability, and he began filming. His video, which he later shipped to CNN, captures officers running toward the brown three-story building, a couple of flashes from the second floor and 27 gunshots.

The video soon became the defining image of the rampage. "I just didn't think I was in great danger," Albarghouti said later.

In a German class in Room 207, Perkins was seated in the back with about 15 fellow students. The gunman barged in with two guns, shot the professor in the head, then started shooting students, Perkins said.

Panic ensued, he said. "And the shots seemed like it lasted forever."

The gunman left Room 207 and tried to return several minutes later, but Perkins and two other students had blocked the door with their feet. He shot through the door.

The last time anyone spoke with Kristina Heeger, she was headed for a 9 a.m. French class in Norris. Within an hour, the sophomore from Vienna had been shot in the back. But she survived.

It was a story that played out across campus, and far beyond, with so many wounded, so many dead. "She's doing better," said a friend, Eric Anderson, last night after seeing her. "She's recovering. We're praying for her right now. She couldn't talk to them yet, or anyone, and they didn't know any details about what happened."

Tucker Armstrong, 19, a freshman from Stephens City, Va., passed by Norris as he headed to a 10 a.m. class. He said in an e-mail that he "noticed several kids hanging and jumping from the second floor windows trying to land in bushes."

Armstrong said he heard repeated bangs. He went to help the people who had leapt from the building, but they yelled at him: " 'Get out of here, run!' At that point I realized they were shots and they just kept going and going."

Police and ambulances poured into the area. Dustin Lynch, 19, a sophomore from Churchville, Md., watched from the nearby Drillfield as unresponsive students were carried out of Norris Hall. "I saw police officers literally carrying kids out," Lynch said. "It basically looked like they were carrying bodies."

Parents arrived at the Inn at Virginia Tech to meet with other grieving families and were distraught at the university's management of the incident. "I think they should have closed the whole thing. It's not worth it. You've got a crazy man on campus. Do something about it," said Hoda Bizri of Princeton, W.Va., who was visiting her daughter Siwar, a graduate student.

Brett Hudner, 23, communications major from Vienna, was heading toward one of the dining halls and suddenly a scrum of police cars raced by. "The scary thing is I know I'm going to go into classes, and there's going to be empty spaces," Hudner said.

The Bizris, meanwhile, were waiting for news about a friend whom they could not locate. They think she was inside Norris Hall.

Jackman reported from Washington.