By Howard Schneider
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 17, 2007 6:54 AM

Virginia Tech president Charles W. Steger said today that the gunman who rampaged through the campus' engineering building on Monday lived in one of the school's dormitories.

The name of the assailant has not been publicly released, but Steger, in an interview on CNN, said he was "a resident in one of our dormitories."

In the interview, Steger held out the possibility that the violence on the campus involved two separate incidents -- a murder-suicide at the West Ambler Johnston Hall that left two dead, and the mass shooting at the Norris Hall engineering building in which a gunman killed 29 and himself.

Though law enforcement officials said it appears the same man was responsible for both, Steger said that remains unclear. The belief that the first shooting, in the dorm, was a "domestic incident" led university officials to assume the incident was confined to that building.

"We thought we had it under control," Steger said. "I don't think anyone could have predicted," what happened next.

Questions have been raised about why the university did not do more to secure the campus in the two hours between the initial shooting in the dorm and the violence in the engineering building.