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Edited with XEmacs |
You can see the part of each story below that mentions how Peter O. was captured here, while an index is here
Thu, 17 Jan 2002
ABC’s World News Now headlines
World News Now (2:00 AM ET) - ABC
ALINA CHO, co-anchor:
Here are this morning’s top stories at ABC News:
In a visit to Kabul this morning, Secretary of State Colin Powell said the US would re–remain committed to Afghanistan for a long time, and that Washington would make a significant contribution to its rebuilding. Powell met with interim Afghan leader Hamid Karzai immediately after his arrival.
The body of the seventh Marine killed in last week’s crash of a refueling plane in Pakistan was given a color guard salute as it was put on a plane for the trip home.
And a student at the Appalachian School of Law in Virginia is under arrest for the shooting deaths of the school’s dean, a professor and another student. The alleged gunman had been dismissed from the school.
And those are some of the stories we’re following this hour at ABC.
World News Now (2:00 AM ET) - ABC
ALINA CHO, co-anchor:
A dismissed student from a small law school in Western Virginia is under arrest for a deadly shooting rampage. The dean at the Appalachian School of Law, a professor and a student were killed. Three other students were wounded. The alleged gunman is a naturalized US citizen from Nigeria who flunked out last year but was allowed to return, only to be dismissed again this week.
DEREK McGINTY, co-anchor:
On Capitol Hill, the Hart Senate office building is being prepared to reopen tomorrow. Officials say it is now free of anthrax three months after a letter filled with billions of spores was sent to Majority Leader Tom Daschle. And two House office buildings where anthrax was detected are expected to reopen next week.
You know, a good friend of mine works for a senator in another office building who was nice enough to let some other senators use his office.
CHO: Cramped quarters.
McGINTY: He didn’t know they’d be hanging around for three or four months after the thing began last Fall.
CHO: Right. I’m just glad it’s open because now we don’t have to say the words ‘anthrax-free’ anymore. It’s hard to say.
McGINTY: Tough one. That is a tough one.
Man kills three at Appalachian Law School in Virginia
Good Morning America (7:00 AM ET) - ABC
ANTONIO MORA, anchor:
A small Virginia law school is still reeling from a deadly shooting rampage allegedly carried out by a student furious at being thrown out. Police say the man stormed on the campus of Appalachia Law School and killed his dean, a professor and a student. ABC’s Steve Osunsami is in Grundy, Virginia, this morning.
Good morning, Steve.
STEVE OSUNSAMI reporting:
Good morning, Antonio. A memorial service will be held today at noon for the people who died yesterday. Witnesses who were here say the accused gunman, 42-year-old Peter Odighizuwa, appeared mentally distressed. He was here, they say, to speak with professors about failing grades, and it was after he walked out of one office that the shooting began.
Dr. JACK BRIGGS (Alleged Gunman’s Doctor): He went upstairs, I guess, and he–he killed the dean and the professor who was well-liked in an execution style, you know, with powder burns on their shirts and everything.
OSUNSAMI: Dean L. Anthony Sutin, was a former Justice Department official who worked on the Clinton campaign. Both the present and former attorneys general shared their condolences with his wife and two young children. There are also three young ladies, both students at this college who are hospitalized this morning in fair condition. Antonio:
MORA: Thank you, Steve. ABC’s Steve Osunsami.
Three dead, three wounded in US school shooting: report
Agence France Presse
Three people were killed and three others wounded when a foreign-born student, apparently angry over bad grades, opened fire at a law school in southwestern Virginia, a state official said.
The shooter was in police custody after being apprehended by other students at the Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, Virginia after the incident Wednesday afternoon. Confirming the number of victims, a spokeswoman for the governor of Virginia said school dean Anthony Sutin was killed along with a professor and a student. Sutin was a top official in the administration of former president Bill Clinton.
Three wounded students were hospitalized, the spokeswoman, Ellen Qualls, said.
“The suspect was tackled by a group of students,” she said.
The student—whose identity and nationality had not yet been revealed—fired a .38 caliber semi-automatic pistol several times.
Founded in 1997 in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains, the school has about 170 students.
It is the second shooting to occur in two days at a US education establishment. On Tuesday, two New York youths were wounded at a high school in Manhattan by an armed student.
Nigerian law student charged in Virginia triple homicide
Agence France Presse
A Nigerian law student charged with shooting three others to death in Grundy, Virginia was apparently unhappy that he had been placed on academic suspension, a police source said Thursday.
Police say Peter Odighizuwa, 42, went on a shooting spree Wednesday that wounded three others at Appalachian Law School in Grundy, Virginia. “(He was) apparently angered at his academic suspension,” according to a source at the Buchanan County Sheriff Department in the western part of the state.
“He is currently held at the Buchanan’s County Jail. He’s been charged with three counts of capital murder and three counts of using a firearm to commit a felony,” according to the sheriff’s department.
Odighizuwa has also been charged with using a firearm with the intention of committing a crime and could face the death penalty.
A former Chicago taxi driver and father of four, Odighizuwa hoped to earn a law degree.
The scenic college with 170 students was founded in 1997.
Wednesday afternoon, Odighizuwa argued about his suspension with a professor. When he left the office, Odighizuwa asked the professor to pray for him. He went to the office of the dean, Anthony Sutin, a former high Justice Department official in the Bil Clinton administration and shot him with a .38 semi-automatic pistol before killing another professor who was there, said police.
Downstairs, he again opened fire, killing a 33-year-old student and wounding three others, according to police.
As he was about to leave, three students held him until police arrived.
This was the second US school shooting in two days. Tuesday, two New York youths were allegedly wounded by an armed high school student in Manhattan.
LAW STUDENT KILLS 3 IN SHOOTING SPREE
Akron Beacon Journal (Ohio)
A failing student allegedly shot three people to death and wounded three more yesterday at the Appalachian School of Law in western Virginia.
The midday attack ended when students overpowered the gunman and held him for sheriff’s deputies, officials said.
Dean L. Anthony Sutin and Professor Thomas Blackwell were gunned down in their offices, according to school officials. Police said the third person slain was student Angela Dales, 33.
Shooting rampage at Virginia law school kills three, leaves three wounded
Roger Alford
The Associated Press
A student who had been dismissed from law school went on a campus shooting spree Wednesday, killing the dean, a professor and a student before he was tackled, authorities said.
The attack also wounded three female students at the Appalachian School of Law. They were hospitalized in fair condition.
“When I got there, there were bodies laying everywhere,” said Dr. Jack Briggs, one of the first to arrive after the shooting in this tiny mountain community in western Virginia.
Dean L. Anthony Sutin and professor Thomas Blackwell were gunned down in their offices, according to school officials. Police said the third person slain was student Angela Dales, 33.
Authorities said the 42-year-old suspect, Peter Odighizuwa, had arrived at school to meet with the dean about his academic dismissal, which went into effect Wednesday.
Briggs said Odighizuwa, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Nigeria, had flunked out last year and been allowed to return to the school.
Odighizuwa first stopped in the office of professor Dale Rubin to talk about his grades and as he left reportedly asked Rubin to pray for him, police said. Rubin, reached by telephone, declined to comment.
He then walked to Sutin’s and Blackwell’s offices and shot them with a .380-caliber pistol, State Police spokesman Mike Stater said. Blackwell had taught contract law to Odighizuwa.
Witnesses said Odighizuwa then went downstairs into a common area and opened fire on a crowd of students, killing Dales and seriously wounding three others.
Todd Ross, 30, of Johnson City, Tenn., was among the students who were outside when Odighizuwa left the building. Ross said the suspect was holding his hands in the air and dropped the gun at his prompting.
Odighizuwa was tackled by students and “struggled after we got him on the ground, but then just laid there,” Ross said. He said the suspect kept shouting, ‘“I have nowhere to go. I have nowhere to go.”’
The suspect was being held at the Buchanan County Jail on three counts of capital murder and three weapons counts, authorities said.
Ellen Qualls, a spokeswoman for Gov. Mark Warner, said Odighizuwa had a history of mental instability that school officials knew about.
First-year student Justin Marlowe from Richwood, W.Va., said the suspect had been in all of his classes.
“He was a real quiet guy who kept to himself. He didn’t talk to anybody, but he gave no indication that he was capable of something like this,” Marlowe said.
He said that after Odighizuwa flunked out a year ago, “the dean bent over backward to get him enrolled again.”
The private law school, with an enrollment of about 170 students, was closed for the rest of the week.
School president Lucius Ellsworth was meeting with government officials in Richmond and flew back when he learned of the shootings.
“Each of us is suffering, but as a family, we can find strength to pass through this terrible dark and tragic valley,” he said.
The governor, who had served on the school’s board until he took office last week, said he was shocked by the shooting.
“I commend the students who acted swiftly to apprehend the suspect,” Warner said. “My heart goes out to the school and the community.”
Sutin, a 1984 graduate of Harvard Law School, was also an associate professor at the school. He left the Justice Department to help found the school after working for the Democratic National Committee and Bill Clinton’s campaign in 1992, according to the Web site of Jurist, the Legal Education Network.
Attorney General John Ashcroft issued a statement expressing his condolences to Sutin’s wife and their two children.
The school opened five years ago in a renovated junior high school in Grundy, a town of about 1,100 a few miles south of the Kentucky and West Virginia state lines.
School officials hope to ease a shortage of lawyers in the coalfields of southwest Virginia, help change the region’s image and foster renewal in Appalachia. The American Bar Association rejected the school’s first application for accreditation in 1999, but the school graduated its first class of 34 in 2000.
There are about 15 faculty members, including alumni of law schools at the University of California at Berkeley and Columbia, Harvard and Howard universities.
“You read about it in other areas, but when it comes home it really hurts,” said state Del. Jackie Stump of Grundy, fighting back tears as he hung his head and walked away from a news conference in Richmond.
Students tackled gunman in law school shooting spree, held him down until police arrived
Chris Kahn
The Associated Press
Tracy Bridges didn’t have much time to think when he saw Peter Odighizuwa on the front lawn of the Appalachian School of Law moments after he allegedly went on a killing spree.
“I just reacted,” said Bridges, a student and sheriff’s deputy who tackled Odighizuwa with classmates Todd Ross and Ted Besen after the Wednesday shootings.
The three men pinned Odighizuwa to the ground, and Bridges handcuffed the man’s arms behind his back.
Odighizuwa, 42, a former student who was dismissed on Tuesday for bad grades, is accused of shooting and killing Dean L. Anthony Sutin, Professor Thomas Blackwell and student Angela Dales.
As screaming students started climbing out of windows, Bridges and Besen said their police and military training took over.
“I’m a former Marine, former police officer,” said Besen, 37. “Who better to do that? I’m trained to do that. I’m not going to let him shoot anyone else if I could.”
Odighizuwa, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Nigeria, was scheduled to be arraigned Thursday in Grundy General District Court on capital murder charges.
Chris Clifton, the school’s financial officer, said he met with Odighizuwa on Tuesday afternoon along with other school officials to notify him that he was being permanently dismissed for poor grades. Odighizuwa had flunked out and then was readmitted a year before.
On Wednesday, Odighizuwa stopped in the office of professor Dale Rubin to talk about his grades and as he left reportedly asked Rubin to pray for him, police said. He then walked to Sutin’s and Blackwell’s offices and shot them with a .380-caliber pistol, State Police spokesman Mike Stater said. Blackwell had taught contract law to Odighizuwa.
“There were three quick shots, then we heard, I think, three more,” said Bridges, 25.
Bridges and Besen, a former police officer from Wilmington, N.C., crept down a back stairwell to the parking lot, and Bridges got his gun out of the car.
Odighizuwa had walked outside and stood with a confused look on his face, Bridges said.
“I planned on blindsiding him from behind,” Besen said. “He sat the weapon down and raised his hands up in the air. I didn’t know if he was praying.”
Besen said he ran toward Odighizuwa and told him to get on the ground.
“He kind of came at me. He swung and hit me in the jaw,” Besen said.
Once pinned down, he kept shouting, “I have nowhere to go. I have nowhere to go.”’
Dean, professor, student killed in shooting rampage at Virginia law school
Chris Kahn
The Associated Press
A student upset about flunking out of law school shot his dean and a professor to death in their offices and opened fire on a crowd of students, killing one and injuring three others, authorities said.
Peter Odighizuwa, 42, was tackled, pinned to the ground and handcuffed by students after the shooting and was later taken into custody by police. He was scheduled to be arraigned Thursday in Grundy General District Court.
Odighizuwa went to the campus of the Appalachia School of Law on Wednesday to talk to his dean, L. Anthony Sutin, about his dismissal, officials said. He shot Sutin and professor Thomas Blackwell, who taught contract law to Odighizuwa, with a .380-caliber pistol, authorities and students said.
Police said the third person slain was student Angela Dales, 33. The injured students were in fair condition at area hospitals.
The suspect, known around the rural campus as “Peter O,” had been struggling with his grades for more than a year and had been dismissed once before. Chris Clifton, the school’s financial aid officer, met with Odighizuwa a day earlier when the student learned he was to be kicked out of school.
“He was angry. He thought he was being treated unfairly, and he wanted to see his transcript,” Clifton said. Odighizuwa, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Nigeria, scheduled a meeting for Wednesday to talk to school officials about his grades.
“I don’t think Peter knew at this time that it was going to be permanent and final,” Clifton said.
Odighizuwa is being held in the Buchanan County Jail on three counts of capital murder and three counts of using a firearm in the commission of a felony, authorities said.
Dr. Jack Briggs, who has a private practice a half-mile from the school, said Odighizuwa went downstairs from Sutin’s and Blackwell’s offices to a commons area and opened fire on students.
“When I got there, there were bodies laying everywhere,” Briggs said.
Odighizuwa left the building and dropped his gun after being confronted. Students then tackled him and helped hold him down. A student who is a sheriff’s deputy handcuffed Odighizuwa.
Odighizuwa kept saying, “I have nowhere to go. I have nowhere to go,” said student Todd Ross, 30, of Johnson City, Tenn., who helped subdue the alleged shooter.
Justin Marlowe, a first-year law student from Richwood, W.Va., said the suspect had been in all of his classes.
“He was a real quiet guy who kept to himself,” Marlowe said. “He didn’t talk to anybody, but he gave no indication that he was capable of something like this.”
“The dean bent over backwards to get him enrolled again” when Odighizuwa flunked out last spring, Marlowe said.
Other classmates, however, described the suspect as an “abrasive” person who would regularly have outbursts in class when he was challenged by classmates or the professor.
“I knew he’d do something like this,” said Zeke Jackson, 40, who tried to recruit him for the school’s Black Law Students’ Association.
The private law school has an enrollment of about 170 students. It opened five years ago in a renovated junior high school to help ease a shortage of lawyers in the region and foster renewal in Appalachia.
Sutin, a 1984 graduate of Harvard Law School, also was an associate professor at the school. He left the Justice Department to help found the school, and had worked for the Democratic National Committee and Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign, according to the Web site of Jurist, the Legal Education Network.
Attorney General John Ashcroft issued a statement expressing his condolences to Sutin’s wife and their two children.
Blackwell, who enjoyed running and playing the trumpet, moved to the area from Dallas about three years ago.
Constance C. Bausell, 52, of Grundy, served with Blackwell on a committee at her church searching for a new pastor. Even though Blackwell was somewhat new to the area, she said, “he fit in like a glove.”
Dean, prof, student dead in shooting rampage at Virginia law school; man who flunked out held
Chris Kahn
The Associated Press
A former law student who is accused of killing his dean, a law professor and another student told a judge Thursday that he is sick and needs help.
Peter Odighizuwa shuffled into Buchanan County General District Court in leg chains, surrounded by police officers.
Hiding his face behind his green arrest warrant, Odighizuwa told Judge Patrick Johnson, “I was supposed to see my doctor. He was supposed to help me out. … I don’t have my medication.”
Odighizuwa, a 43-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen from Nigeria, went to the Appalachian School of Law on Wednesday to talk to his dean, L. Anthony Sutin, about Odighizuwa’s dismissal for failing grades, officials said. He shot Sutin and professor Thomas Blackwell, who taught Odighizuwa’s contracts classes during the fall and winter, with a .380-caliber pistol, authorities and students said.
Also killed was student Angela Dales, 33, said State Police spokesman Mike Stater. Three other students were injured and were hospitalized in fair condition.
Prosecutors charged Odighizuwa with three counts of capital murder, three counts of attempted capital murder and six charges for use of a firearm in a felony.
A few minutes before his arraignment, Odighizuwa told reporters as he was led into the courtroom, “I was sick, I was sick. I need help.”
When Johnson said he would appoint lawyer James C. Turk Jr. to represent him, Odighizuwa asked for another attorney who he named. But Johnson appointed Turk and said, “Once you’ve talked with him, I’m sure you’ll see he can help you.”
Odighizuwa will remain held without bond pending a preliminary hearing March 21.
Students ended the rampage by confronting and then tackling the gunman, officials said.
“He was angry. He thought he was being treated unfairly, and he wanted to see his transcript,” said Chris Clifton, the school’s financial aid officer.
“I don’t think Peter knew at this time that it (dismissal) was going to be permanent and final,” Clifton added.
Odighizuwa was arrested Aug. 15 for hitting his wife in the face and bruising her eye, according to court records. A hearing on assault and battery charges is scheduled for Aug. 6.
He and his wife, Abieyuwa Odighizuwa, have four children. Residents said the family had been having financial trouble and townspeople were trying to help out.
The suspect, known around the rural campus as “Peter O,” had been struggling with his grades for more than a year and had been dismissed once before. Clifton met with Odighizuwa a day earlier when the student learned he was to be kicked out of school.
Dr. Jack Briggs, who has a private practice a half-mile from the school, said Odighizuwa went downstairs from Sutin’s and Blackwell’s offices to a commons area and opened fire on students.
“When I got there, there were bodies laying everywhere,” Briggs said.
Odighizuwa left the building and dropped his gun after being confronted. Students then tackled him and one who is a sheriff’s deputy handcuffed him.
Odighizuwa kept saying, “I have nowhere to go. I have nowhere to go,” said student Todd Ross, 30, of Johnson City, Tenn.
Justin Marlowe, a first-year law student from Richwood, W.Va., said the suspect had been in all of his classes.
“He was a real quiet guy who kept to himself,” Marlowe said. “He didn’t talk to anybody, but he gave no indication that he was capable of something like this.”
Other classmates, however, described the suspect as an “abrasive” person who would regularly have outbursts in class when he was challenged by classmates or the professor.
“I knew he’d do something like this,” said Zeke Jackson, 40, who tried to recruit him for the school’s Black Law Students’ Association.
The private law school has an enrollment of about 170 students. It opened five years ago in a renovated junior high school to help ease a shortage of lawyers in the region and foster renewal in Appalachia.
Sutin, a 1984 graduate of Harvard Law School, also was an associate professor at the school. He left the Justice Department to help found the school, and had worked for the Democratic National Committee and Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign, according to the Web site of Jurist, the Legal Education Network.
Attorney General John Ashcroft issued a statement expressing his condolences to Sutin’s wife and their two children.
‘I was sick’ - murder charges filed against former law student in deadly school rampage
Chris Kahn
The Associated Press
The expelled law school student accused of killing his dean and two others in a campus shooting spree was so paranoid and prone to outbursts that at least one classmate said he saw the violence coming.
At Thursday’s arraignment on three counts of capital murder, Peter Odighizuwa, 43, told the judge he was sick and needed help.
“I was supposed to see my doctor,” Odighizuwa said, hiding his face behind a green arrest warrant. “He was supposed to help me out … I don’t have my medication.”
Police say Odighizuwa opened fire with a handgun at the Appalachian School of Law on Wednesday, a day after he was dismissed from the school for a second time.
Dean L. Anthony Sutin and Professor Thomas Blackwell were slain in their offices and student Angela Dales, 33, died later at a hospital. Three other students were wounded.
Prosecutor Sheila Tolliver said she will seek the death penalty.
Odighizuwa also faces three counts of attempted capital murder and six weapons charges. A few minutes before his arraignment, Odighizuwa told reporters as he was led into the courtroom, “I was sick, I was sick. I need help.”
Police said Odighizuwa was evaluated and given medication in jail, but declined to identify the drug.
On Thursday, students wept in small, shivering circles, many of them wondering about the classmate who always seemed aloof and was prone to vulgar outbursts.
Kenneth Brown, 28, said his friends always joked that Odighizuwa was one of those guys who would finally crack and bring a gun to school.
“He was kind of off-balance,” Brown said. “When we met last year, he actually came up and shook my hand and asked my name. Then, like five minutes later he came back and said, ‘You know I’m not crazy, but people tick me off sometimes.’ Out of the blue.”
Zeke Jackson, 40, said he stopped trying to recruit Odighizuwa for the school’s Black Law Students’ Association after Odighizuwa sent the dean a letter complaining that Jackson was harassing him.
“I knew he’d do something like this,” Jackson said.
Odighizuwa was arrested on Aug. 15 for allegedly assaulting his wife. The police report said he hit her in the face, bruising her right eye.
Police said Odighizuwa repeatedly approached them with concerns about people breaking into his house on the outskirts of this small town in western Virginia.
Chief Deputy Randall Ashby said Odighizuwa told police last year that someone placed a bullet in a stairway at his home. Three months ago, he complained again that his home has been broken into.
“Both times my deputies checked it out and found nothing,” Ashby said.
Odighizuwa also regularly visited the sheriff’s office to nitpick with deputies over the wording of the police reports he’d filed, Ashby said.
Despite Odighizuwa’s problems, the dean and others tried to help him through school. Last year, Sutin raised enough money to buy Odighizuwa a used car, clothes and food, according to students and staff.
Chris Clifton, the school’s financial aid officer, said Sutin also helped get Odighizuwa a $19,000 loan last fall.
“That’s what doesn’t make sense,” said Mary Kilpatrick, a third-year student, wondering aloud why Odighizuwa would kill the dean. “He’s the one who allowed him to stay here.”
Odighizuwa, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Nigeria, had been struggling in school for more than a year and had been dismissed before. His grades were poor again last semester, and school officials told Odighizuwa on Tuesday that they were flunking him.
“I don’t think Peter knew at this time that it was going to be permanent and final,” said Clifton, the financial aid officer. “He slung his chair across the room and slammed the door.”
The next day, after the rampage, witnesses say Odighizuwa left the building, dropped a gun and was tackled by several students.
After a tearful memorial service at Grundy Baptist Church, hundreds of people gathered to place flowers at the base of the school’s stone sign, under an American flag flying at half-staff.
“We feel in our hearts the deepest pain,” said Rabbi Stanley Funston of a synagogue in Bluefield, W.Va., that Sutin attended during the holidays.
Students Tackle Gunman in Law School
Chris Kahn
Associated Press Online
Tracy Bridges didn’t have much time to think when he saw Peter Odighizuwa on the front lawn of the Appalachian School of Law moments after he allegedly went on a killing spree.
“I just reacted,” said Bridges, a student and sheriff’s deputy who tackled Odighizuwa with classmates Todd Ross and Ted Besen after the Wednesday shootings.
The three men pinned Odighizuwa to the ground, and Bridges handcuffed the man’s arms behind his back.
Odighizuwa, 42, a former student who was dismissed on Tuesday for bad grades, is accused of shooting and killing Dean L. Anthony Sutin, Professor Thomas Blackwell and student Angela Dales.
As screaming students started climbing out of windows, Bridges and Besen said their police and military training took over.
“I’m a former Marine, former police officer,” said Besen, 37. “Who better to do that? I’m trained to do that. I’m not going to let him shoot anyone else if I could.”
Odighizuwa, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Nigeria, was scheduled to be arraigned Thursday in Grundy General District Court on capital murder charges.
Chris Clifton, the school’s financial officer, said he met with Odighizuwa on Tuesday afternoon along with other school officials to notify him that he was being permanently dismissed for poor grades. Odighizuwa had flunked out and then was readmitted a year before.
On Wednesday, Odighizuwa stopped in the office of professor Dale Rubin to talk about his grades and as he left reportedly asked Rubin to pray for him, police said. He then walked to Sutin’s and Blackwell’s offices and shot them with a .380-caliber pistol, State Police spokesman Mike Stater said. Blackwell had taught contract law to Odighizuwa.
“There were three quick shots, then we heard, I think, three more,” said Bridges, 25.
Bridges and Besen, a former police officer from Wilmington, N.C., crept down a back stairwell to the parking lot, and Bridges got his gun out of the car.
Odighizuwa had walked outside and stood with a confused look on his face, Bridges said.
“I planned on blindsiding him from behind,” Besen said. “He sat the weapon down and raised his hands up in the air. I didn’t know if he was praying.”
Besen said he ran toward Odighizuwa and told him to get on the ground.
“He kind of came at me. He swung and hit me in the jaw,” Besen said.
Once pinned down, he kept shouting, “I have nowhere to go. I have nowhere to go.”’
Accused College Shooter Says He’s Sick
Chris Kahn
Associated Press Online
The expelled law school student accused of killing his dean and two others in a campus shooting spree was so paranoid and prone to outbursts that at least one classmate said he saw the violence coming.
At Thursday’s arraignment on three counts of capital murder, Peter Odighizuwa, 43, told the judge he was sick and needed help.
“I was supposed to see my doctor,” Odighizuwa said, hiding his face behind a green arrest warrant. “He was supposed to help me out … I don’t have my medication.”
Police say Odighizuwa opened fire with a handgun at the Appalachian School of Law on Wednesday, a day after he was dismissed from the school for a second time.
Dean L. Anthony Sutin and Professor Thomas Blackwell were slain in their offices and student Angela Dales, 33, died later at a hospital. Three other students were wounded.
Prosecutor Sheila Tolliver said she will seek the death penalty.
Odighizuwa also faces three counts of attempted capital murder and six weapons charges. A few minutes before his arraignment, Odighizuwa told reporters as he was led into the courtroom, “I was sick, I was sick. I need help.”
Police said Odighizuwa was evaluated and given medication in jail, but declined to identify the drug.
On Thursday, students wept in small, shivering circles, many of them wondering about the classmate who always seemed aloof and was prone to vulgar outbursts.
Kenneth Brown, 28, said his friends always joked that Odighizuwa was one of those guys who would finally crack and bring a gun to school.
“He was kind of off-balance,” Brown said. “When we met last year, he actually came up and shook my hand and asked my name. Then, like five minutes later he came back and said, ‘You know I’m not crazy, but people tick me off sometimes.’ Out of the blue.”
Zeke Jackson, 40, said he stopped trying to recruit Odighizuwa for the school’s Black Law Students’ Association after Odighizuwa sent the dean a letter complaining that Jackson was harassing him.
“I knew he’d do something like this,” Jackson said.
Odighizuwa was arrested on Aug. 15 for allegedly assaulting his wife. The police report said he hit her in the face, bruising her right eye.
Police said Odighizuwa repeatedly approached them with concerns about people breaking into his house on the outskirts of this small town in western Virginia.
Chief Deputy Randall Ashby said Odighizuwa told police last year that someone placed a bullet in a stairway at his home. Three months ago, he complained again that his home has been broken into.
“Both times my deputies checked it out and found nothing,” Ashby said.
Odighizuwa also regularly visited the sheriff’s office to nitpick with deputies over the wording of the police reports he’d filed, Ashby said.
Despite Odighizuwa’s problems, the dean and others tried to help him through school. Last year, Sutin raised enough money to buy Odighizuwa a used car, clothes and food, according to students and staff.
Chris Clifton, the school’s financial aid officer, said Sutin also helped get Odighizuwa a $19,000 loan last fall.
“That’s what doesn’t make sense,” said Mary Kilpatrick, a third-year student, wondering aloud why Odighizuwa would kill the dean. “He’s the one who allowed him to stay here.”
Odighizuwa, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Nigeria, had been struggling in school for more than a year and had been dismissed before. His grades were poor again last semester, and school officials told Odighizuwa on Tuesday that they were flunking him.
“I don’t think Peter knew at this time that it was going to be permanent and final,” said Clifton, the financial aid officer. “He slung his chair across the room and slammed the door.”
The next day, after the rampage, witnesses say Odighizuwa left the building, dropped a gun and was tackled by several students.
After a tearful memorial service at Grundy Baptist Church, hundreds of people gathered to place flowers at the base of the school’s stone sign, under an American flag flying at half-staff.
“We feel in our hearts the deepest pain,” said Rabbi Stanley Funston of a synagogue in Bluefield, W.Va., that Sutin attended during the holidays.
Chris Kahn
Associated Press Worldstream
Tracy Bridges didn’t have much time to think when he saw Peter Odighizuwa on the front lawn of the Appalachian School of Law moments after he allegedly went on a killing spree.
“I just reacted,” said Bridges, a student and sheriff’s deputy who tackled Odighizuwa with classmates Todd Ross and Ted Besen after the Wednesday shootings.
The three men pinned Odighizuwa to the ground, and Bridges handcuffed the man’s arms behind his back.
Odighizuwa, 42, a former student who was dismissed on Tuesday for bad grades, is accused of shooting and killing Dean L. Anthony Sutin, Professor Thomas Blackwell and student Angela Dales.
As screaming students started climbing out of windows, Bridges and Besen said their police and military training took over.
“I’m a former Marine, former police officer,” said Besen, 37. “Who better to do that? I’m trained to do that. I’m not going to let him shoot anyone else if I could.”
Odighizuwa, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Nigeria, was scheduled to be arraigned Thursday in Grundy General District Court on capital murder charges.
Chris Clifton, the school’s financial officer, said he met with Odighizuwa on Tuesday afternoon along with other school officials to notify him that he was being permanently dismissed for poor grades. Odighizuwa had flunked out and then was readmitted a year before.
On Wednesday, Odighizuwa stopped in the office of professor Dale Rubin to talk about his grades and as he left reportedly asked Rubin to pray for him, police said. He then walked to Sutin’s and Blackwell’s offices and shot them with a .380-caliber pistol, State Police spokesman Mike Stater said. Blackwell had taught contract law to Odighizuwa.
“There were three quick shots, then we heard, I think, three more,” said Bridges, 25.
Bridges and Besen, a former police officer from Wilmington, North Carolina, crept down a back stairwell to the parking lot, and Bridges got his gun out of the car.
Odighizuwa had walked outside and stood with a confused look on his face, Bridges said.
“I planned on blindsiding him from behind,” Besen said. “He sat the weapon down and raised his hands up in the air. I didn’t know if he was praying.”
Besen said he ran toward Odighizuwa and told him to get on the ground.
“He kind of came at me. He swung and hit me in the jaw,” Besen said.
Once pinned down, he kept shouting, “I have nowhere to go. I have nowhere to go.”’
‘I was sick’ _ murder charges filed against former law student in deadly school rampage
Chris Kahn
Associated Press Worldstream
The expelled law school student accused of killing his dean and two others in a campus shooting spree was so paranoid and prone to outbursts that at least one classmate said he saw the violence coming.
At Thursday’s arraignment on three counts of capital murder, Peter Odighizuwa, 43, told the judge he was sick and needed help.
“I was supposed to see my doctor,” Odighizuwa said, hiding his face behind a green arrest warrant. “He was supposed to help me out … I don’t have my medication.”
Prosecutor Sheila Tolliver said she will seek the death penalty.
Police say Odighizuwa, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Nigeria, opened fire with a handgun at the Appalachian School of Law on Wednesday, a day after he was dismissed from the school for a second time.
L. Anthony Sutin, the dean, and professor Thomas Blackwell were slain in their offices and student Angela Dales, 33, was shot in an ensuing shooting rampage and died later at a hospital. Three other students were wounded.
He dropped his weapon when tackled by several students.
Odighizuwa also faces three counts of attempted capital murder and six weapons charges. A few minutes before his arraignment, Odighizuwa told reporters as he was led into the courtroom, “I was sick, I was sick. I need help.”
Police said Odighizuwa was evaluated and given medication in jail, but declined to identify the drug.
On Thursday, students wept in small, shivering circles, many of them wondering about the classmate who always seemed aloof and was prone to vulgar outbursts.
Kenneth Brown, 28, said his friends always joked that Odighizuwa was one of those guys who would finally crack and bring a gun to school.
“He was kind of off-balance,” Brown said. “When we met last year, he actually came up and shook my hand and asked my name. Then, like five minutes later he came back and said, ‘You know I’m not crazy, but people tick me off sometimes.’ Out of the blue.”
Odighizuwa was arrested on Aug. 15 for allegedly assaulting his wife. The police report said he hit her in the face, bruising her right eye.
Police said Odighizuwa repeatedly approached them with concerns about people breaking into his house on the outskirts of this small town in western Virginia.
Chief Deputy Randall Ashby said Odighizuwa told police last year that someone placed a bullet in a stairway at his home. Three months ago, he complained again that his home has been broken into.
“Both times my deputies checked it out and found nothing,” Ashby said.
Despite Odighizuwa’s problems, the dean and others tried to help him through school. Last year, Sutin raised enough money to buy Odighizuwa a used car, clothes and food, according to students and staff.
“That’s what doesn’t make sense,” said Mary Kilpatrick, a third-year student, wondering aloud why Odighizuwa would kill the dean. “He’s the one who allowed him to stay here.”
Odighizuwa had been struggling in school for more than a year and had been dismissed before. His grades were poor again last semester, and school officials told Odighizuwa on Tuesday that they were flunking him.
Three killed in college shootings
Belfast Telegraph
A CLOSE-knit American community was today in mourning after a college student killed his dean, a lecturer and another student, and injured three women students during a shooting rampage.
The gunman, named as Peter Odighizuma, was overpowered by four other students while still wielding his semi-automatic handgun at the tiny college campus at the Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, Virginia.
The remote town was in shock after the shootings. Dr Jack Briggs, the first doctor on the scene, said the dean, Anthony Sutin, had apparently been shot twice in the head at point-blank range, while the professor, who has not been named, was shot while he lay wounded on the ground.
“It appears as though some of these shots were fired after one professor was down and they were shot at point blank range,” the doctor told Fox News.
“Two shots were shot into the dean in the head. It appears he was executed.
“It looked like a war zone. There were bodies everywhere.”
The two staff members were apparently shot in front of their secretaries before the gunman went on the rampage in which he shot randomly at students.
The doctor said the gunman was a “foreign exchange student” and had been on the point of being told to leave the law school, which has around 170 students and was founded in 1997.
“Four students tackled him and took him down,” said the doctor.
“They got him down and kept him for the police. I do not believe he had given up his weapon.
“This student was a foreign student who had had difficulty. He flunked out of school last year.
“He was given another chance, but this was the end of the first semester. I believe that the dean was about to tell him that he would have to leave.
“He took his anger out on the people who I think he thought were responsible for him leaving the school.”
The doctor added: “The person who did the shooting was a patient of mine. I saw him about six months ago. He was complaining of stress.”
“He was a timebomb waiting to go off.”
Belfast News Letter (Northern Ireland)
FOUR students overpowered a gunman who went on a shooting spree at their US college last night, killing three people in what a doctor described as “executions”.
The four students tackled the man while he was still armed with a .380 semi -automatic pistol and managed to hold him until police arrived at the Appalachian School of Law, in Grundy, Virginia.
He had already shot and killed three people, including the dean of the college and one of the professors, and left three other students critically injured. The doctor who was the first medical worker on the scene said the dean of the school, Anthony Sutin, had been “executed” with shots to the head, and another member of staff had been shot in the back as he lay on the ground.
“It appears as though some of these shots were after one professor was down and they were shot at point-blank range,” said Dr Jack Briggs.
“Two shots were shot into the dean in the head. It appears he was executed. It looked like a war zone. There were bodies everywhere.”
The two staff members were apparently shot in front of their secretaries before the gunman went on a spree in which he shot randomly at students.
The doctor said the gunman was a “foreign exchange student” and had been on the point of being told to leave the law school which has around 170 students and was founded in 1997.
“Four students tackled him and took him down,” said the doctor. “They got him down and kept him for his police. I do not believe he had given up his weapon.
“This student was a foreign student who had had difficulty. He flunked out of school last year.
“He was given another chance, but this was the end of the first semester. I believe that the dean was about to tell him that he would have to leave.
“He took his anger out on the people who I think he thought were responsible for him leaving the school.”
The three students were described as being “critical” by Dr Briggs, and had been transferred by helicopter to hospitals near the small town, which is in a rural area of the Appalachian Mountains.
The doctor added: “The person who did the shooting was a patient of mine. I saw him about six months ago. He was complaining of stress.
“He was a timebomb waiting to go off. There are lots of things that will come out in the trial that I think are probably pretty pertinent to his personality.”
The college was set up in 1997 to help the run-down coal-mining area’s economy and Mr Sutin, a graduate of Harvard Law School, was made principal with a staff of just 15.
Dr Briggs paid tribute to the dean and said: “He was a real good guy.”
STUDENTS CAPTURE KILLER GUNMAN
Hugh Dougherty
Birmingham Post
Four students overpowered a gunman who went on a shooting spree at their US college last night, killing three people in what a doctor described as ‘executions’.
The four tackled the man while he was still armed with a .38 semi-automatic pistol and managed to hold him until police arrived at the Appalachian School of Law, in Grundy, Virginia.
Gunman Peter Odighizuma, aged 43, was being held in jail last night. One of the dead men was the Dean - Anthony Sutin - the chief legal adviser to former Presidential candidate Al Gore’s failed bid for the White House in 2000. He had also been an assistant US attorney-general in Washington before being appointed to the college.
The doctor who was the first medical worker on the scene said Mr Sutin had been ‘executed’ with shots to the head, and another member of staff had been shot in the back as he lay on the ground. A third staff member was also killed.
‘It appears as though some of these shots were after one professor was down and they were shot at point-blank range,’ said Dr Jack Briggs.
‘Two shots were fired into the dean - in the head. It appears he was executed.
‘It looked like a war zone. There were bodies everywhere.’ Two of the staff members were apparently shot in front of their secretaries before the gunman went on a spree in which he shot randomly at students.
The doctor said the gunman was a ‘foreign exchange student’ and had been on the point of being told to leave the law school which has 170 students.
‘Four students tackled him and took him down,’ said the doctor.
‘They got him down and kept him for the police. I do not believe he had given up his weapon.
‘This student was a foreign student who had had difficulty. He flunked out of school last year.
‘He was given another chance, but this was the end of the first semester. I believe that the dean was about to tell him that he would have to leave.
‘He took his anger out on the
Birmingham Evening Mail
A GUNMAN killed three people and wounded three others during a shooting spree at a law school in the United States today, officials said. Among the dead at the Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, Virginia, was the dean, Anthony Sutin, said a spokeswoman for Governor Mark Warner.
She said a student and another member of the faculty were also killed.
State police believe students had arrested the suspect, Qualls said. She said the weapon was a .380 semiautomatic handgun.
Grundy is in the Appalachian foothills, 120 miles west of Roanoke.
Bristol Evening Post
AMERICA: Four students overpowered a gunman who went on a shooting spree at their US college last night, killing three people in what a doctor described as “executions”. The four students tackled the man while he was still armed with a .380 semi -automatic pistol and managed to hold him until police arrived at the Appalachian School of Law, in Grundy, Virginia.
He had already shot and killed three people, including the dean of the college and one of the professors, and left three other students critically injured.
The gunman was allegedly on the point of being told to leave the law school due to poor results.
Bristol Evening Post
A DISGRUNTLED student shot and killed three people and wounded three others at a US law college. Police said the college dean, a professor and another student were killed in the incident in Virginia.
Peter Odighizuma, 43, pictured, is being held by police over the shooting at the Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, which happened after he was suspended.
Witnesses said the man began firing a .380 semi-automatic handgun in the dean’s office before shooting at random in the student lounge.
Three students were wounded and taken to Buchanan General Hospital.
Broadcast News (BN)
GRUNDY, Virginia—A struggling Nigerian student at a Virginia law school went on a campus shooting rampage yesterday, killing the dean, a professor and a student before being tackled by students.
Police say the gunman asked a professor to pray for him before he started shooting.
The attack, with a semi-automatic handgun, also wounded three students at the Appalachian School of Law.
Two were in surgery last night and the third is listed in fair condition.
The 42-year-old suspect, (Peter Odighizuwa), went to the school to meet with the dean about his academic suspension.
It’s reported he had a history of mental instability that school officials knew about.
He’s being held on three counts of capital murder and three weapons counts.
Broadcast News (BN)
(Kabul, Afghanistan-AP)—Secretary of State Colin Powell pledges the U-S will support Afghanistan now and in the future.
He’s on a quick visit to Afghanistan before going to India. His movements are being kept secret for security reasons.
In Kabul today, Powell met with Afghanistan’s interim president Hamid Karzai (HAH’-mihd KAHR’-zeye) and declared, We will be with you in this current crisis and in the future.”
He said the U-S will be making a substantial financial commitment at next week’s Afghan donor conference in Tokyo and will help make sure Afghanistan is never again used as a launch-pad for terrorism.
Powell is also thanking Afghan employees of the U-S Embassy, who protected the site during the years the U-S was not there.
(Pentagon-AP)—The U-S military hasn’t given up the search for the elusive Osama bin Laden or for evidence linking his network to weapons of mass destruction.
Defense officials say, so far, there’s no proof the terrorists were able to possess chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. A search of some 45 of 50 suspected sites has found nothing conclusive.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld yesterday did mention some suspicious canisters that might have contained chemical weapons. But later, defense officials cast doubt on that, saying they’re believed to be innocuous. But the hunt for further proof continues, as does the chase for bin Laden.
Rumsfeld says the U-S military is operating on the basis that bin Laden remains in Afghanistan. And the defense secretary still insists the terrorist leader eventually will be found.
(Boston-AP)—The government says Richard Reid trained with al-Qaida terrorists in Afghanistan, and he could get five life terms in prison.
A new federal indictment accuses the British citizen of trying to blow up a plane by lighting explosives in his shoes. His lawyer notes he’s not accused of trying to further the cause of any terrorist organization.
Investigators say Reid’s travels match those of an al-Qaida operative listed on a computer obtained in Afghanistan by The Wall Street Journal.
And a U-S military official said Reid has been linked to an al-Qaida camp in Afghanistan by a detainee at the U-S naval base in Cuba.
(Jerusalem-AP)—The blockade is back.
Israel has blocked off four West Bank cities today, after more Palestinian shooting attacks. Palestinian gunmen have killed three civilians in the past three days.
The Israeli Security Cabinet agreed on the action early today.
A bomb blast Monday killed a Palestinian militia leader. The Palestinians say it was an Israeli assassination.
Palestinian security officials say a Palestinian militia member was killed early today in a clash with Israeli soldiers outside the town of Nablus.
Israeli police say a Palestinian doctor was gunned down yesterday by fellow Palestinians who mistook him for a Jew because he was driving a car with Israeli license plates. Two other civilians were killed Tuesday.
(White House-AP)—President Bush is pitching his energy plan today in a visit to Teamsters headquarters in Washington.
The big union was a key Bush ally in last year’s House passage of the plan—and the president’s hoping the Teamsters can help convince Senators to go along this year.
The union visit is part of the build-up to Bush’s State of the Union speech, in which energy policy is expected to play a prominent role. The president argues America urgently needs to reduce its dependence on foreign oil, and his plan would do just that. It emphasizes developing domestic sources of energy.
But environmentalists say Bush is giving short-shrift to conservation. And they especially don’t like his plan to allow drilling in the Alaskan Arctic.
Teamsters officials see that drilling as a source of jobs.
(Washington-AP)—Republicans and Democrats are sharpening their contrasting views of the economy as they begin planning for this fall’s elections.
Both parties are beginning their three-day winter meetings today. The Democrats are meeting in Washington. The Republicans are convening in the capital of President Bush’s home state, Texas.
Democrats are hoping to build on their victories this past November, with an eye toward retaking control of the House.
The Republicans will be looking for ways to win back control of the U-S Senate while increasing their grip on the House. The G-O-P is stepping up efforts to broaden the party’s appeal among Hispanics and improve turnout of grassroots voters.
The challenge for Democrats is how to expand their appeal to rural voters and retain their core minority and women voters.
(Grundy, Virginia-AP)—Violence at a western Virginia law school has left the dean and two other people dead.
Yesterday’s shootings at the Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, Virginia, have stunned the community.
Investigators say suspect, Peter Odighizuwa (ah di-guh-ZOO’-muh), went to the school to discuss his academic dismissal. Officials say he met a professor, asked him to pray for him, then went to the offices of the dean and another professor and shot them.
Witnesses say the student then went to a common area, opening fire on a crowd of students, killing one and seriously wounding three others.
The suspect is a naturalized U-S citizen from Nigeria who had flunked out last year but been allowed to return this year.
A spokeswoman for Virginia’s governor says the suspect had a history of mental instability and says school officials knew about it.
(Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba-AP)—A Marine commander at the U-S navy base in Cuba says some of the latest arriving Afghan war prisoners have made death threats.
Brigadier General Michael Lehnert says several of the detainees have publicly stated their intent to kill an American before leaving Guantanamo Bay.
Heavily armed Marines met the latest group of 30 Taliban and al-Qaida war prisoners yesterday, bringing to 80 the number being detained. Thirty more are due to arrive today.
There’s been some criticism of the treatment of the prisoners and a team from the international Red Cross is to inspect conditions at the camp today. Amnesty International says keeping detainees in cages falls below minimum standards for humane treatment.” The group says the six-by-eight-foot cells are smaller than considered acceptable for ordinary prisoners.
The U-S says the Afghan detainees are not ordinary. As General Lehnert puts it, These are not nice people.”
(Washington-AP)—Microsoft chairman Bill Gates is putting a new emphasis on security and privacy in the company’s operating systems and software applications.
The Associated Press has obtained e-mail to Microsoft employees in which Gates calls the new philosophy, Trustworthy Computing.” He says his highest priority is ensuring computer users can use the Internet without fear of getting hacked.
The announcement follows revelations of serious security flaws in the Windows X-P operating system unveiled last autumn and previous security holes in Microsoft applications.
Industry watchers are praising the move. Analyst David Smith says it may be overdue.
Gates’ message to employees says new software features will have to take a backseat to resolving security issues.
(Maryland City, Maryland-AP)—Fire officials say people who thought they were buying kerosene at a gas station in Maryland got gasoline instead.
A delivery of gasoline was mistakenly substituted for kerosene at a Citgo station in Maryland City, outside Baltimore.
Fire officials say anybody who bought what they thought was kerosene at the station this week should check the fuel carefully before using it. Using gasoline in devices like kerosene heaters can cause an explosion.
Suspended law student kills three on campus
Calgary Herald (Alberta, Canada)
A struggling Nigerian student at a Virginia law school went on a campus shooting rampage Wednesday, killing the dean, a professor and a student before he was tackled by other students, authorities said.
The attack also wounded three students at the Appalachian School of Law in Grundy. Two were in surgery Wednesday evening and the third was listed in fair condition.
“When I got there, there were bodies laying everywhere,” said Dr. Jack Briggs, who was one of the first to arrive after the shooting.
The 42-year-old suspect, Peter Odighizuwa, went to the school to meet with the dean about his recent academic suspension, state police said.
Shooting at a small law school in Virginia kills three and wounds three
CBS Morning News (6:30 AM ET) - CBS
JULIE CHEN, anchor:
Three people are dead and three others were wounded in a shooting at a small law school in western Virginia. Police say the suspect, Peter Odighizuma, opened fire at Appalachian School of Law, killing a dean, a professor and a student. He had flunked out last year, had been allowed to return and was at the school Wednesday to talk to the dean about his second dismissal. Witnesses say after shooting the dean, Odighizuma fired into a crowd of students.
Mr. JOHN HARRIS (Witness): I ran. I got out because I–I could–can’t do anything. The guy has a pistol. What do you do? So you run. So I ran out the door and ran to the library, told people that he has a gun, that they would–should probably leave.
CHEN: Other students tackled the gunman. Officials say he had a history of mental instability.
The Early Show (7:00 AM ET) - CBS
BRYANT GUMBEL, co-host:
An immigrant law student is being held on three counts of capital murder after opening fire at his Virginia school on Wednesday, killing three people and injuring three others. Forty-three-year-old Peter Odighizuwa was apparently upset about being kicked out of the Appalachian School of Law because of poor grades. Jason Arthur, Ted Besen and Tracy Bridges were among a group of students who took the gunman down. They’re all in Grundy, Virginia.
Gentlemen, good morning.
Mr. JASON ARTHUR (Shooting Witness): Good morning, sir.
Mr. TED BESEN (Helped Subdue Suspect): Good morning.
Mr. TRACY BRIDGES (Helped Subdue Suspect): Good morning.
GUMBEL: Mr. Arthur, let me start with you, if I might, because I’m told you actually witnessed the sooting–shooting. Tell me what you saw.
Mr. ARTHUR: It was shortly after 1:00 and I had returned from lunch and I was walking through the lobby of the school when Peter–was very close to me when he pulled a gun and began shooting.
GUMBEL: Was this after he had already shot Dean Rubin and Professor Blackwell?
Mr. ARTHUR: I–I’m–was not sure, sir. I had just gotten back to campus. I–I–I don’t know exactly in what order the shootings occurred.
GUMBEL: You say he began shooting. Was he picking out particular students or–or just spraying wherever he wished?
Mr. ARTHUR: He seemed to, as he walked all the way to the–to the back corner of the lobby area and walked up to a group of three females and opened fire.
GUMBEL: A group of three females. Was he necessarily going after female students? I ask that because supposedly he’d had problems with female students before.
Mr. ARTHUR: I can’t comment as to that, sir.
GUMBEL: Mr. Besen and Mr. Bridges, you two, I’m told, were together when the shooting started. You both have police backgrounds. Did you know immediately that it was gunfire you were hearing?
Mr. BESEN: No. We couldn’t tell exactly what it was at first. We thought it might have been maintenance in the hallways because there’s an echo. But after the–the second group of shooting–shots and the screams, that’s when we knew that something was going on.
GUMBEL: You say the second group. Can I assume that the first group was the grouping that–that took down Dean Sutin and Professor Blackwell?
Mr. BESEN: I–I believe was the first was that–was Professor Blackwell was shot first, and then I believe the second grouping was Dean Sutin.
GUMBEL: Yeah. You chased Peter O–which I understand he’s called–you chased Peter O down outside. Tell me about what happened.
Mr. BESEN: Well, we came–we exited our class. We came out. That’s when other professor had come out and stated that Professor Blackwell had been shot by Peter O. Tracy and I went back to the room, got the students out of the classroom, we went down the stairs in the back of the building and showed them the door so they could go to the rear of the–the school. I went around the–the back corner, opposite side of the school here, to get a visual on him as he was walking out of the–the Lions Lounge downstairs.
GUMBEL: Was he still armed?
Mr. BESEN: And at that–at–at that point in time he was still armed. He had walked over to a light just directly back over here, where he had set down the weapon. He put up his arms and he was yelling and screaming something. I couldn’t tell. I was trying to creep up on him, and when he turned toward the street out here, that’s when I–I rushed him.
GUMBEL: Did he try to fight back or resist?
Mr. BESEN: Oh, yes. I–I ordered him to get down to the ground when he turned back on me because he–he obviously heard me coming from behind. He said no, and then I went to put him on the ground. He punched me in the jaw, then started swinging at me furiously. At that point in time I just let him come toward me, keep him busy while some other students…
GUMBEL: Yeah.
Mr. BESEN: …came and hit him from the backside.
GUMBEL: And, Tracy, I understand that’s when you came along. You helped pin him down. Once you had him down, did–did Peter O say anything to you?
Mr. BRIDGES: The only comment that I know that he was mumbling was something about him being a Muslim and to be taken to a mosque.
GUMBEL: Did you know him, Tracy? Did you know him? What was he like?
Mr. BRIDGES: I knew of him. It’s a relatively small school here, so we know most of the faces here at the school. So I did know of Peter.
GUMBEL: We’re told he had a history of mental instability. Did that surprise you?
Mr. BRIDGES: I’m not really sure. I–I didn’t have any classes or anything with Peter. You know, I’ve heard rumors of him having conflicts with other students, but I’ve not personally dealt with him.
GUMBEL: Yeah. Campus will be closed there for a while. What’s the mood there?
Mr. BRIDGES: It’s just kind of surreal right now. It is a very close campus. Everybody was very close with the students who were injured and the faculty and their families. And we just hope we can help them get through this.
GUMBEL: Don’t we all. Gentlemen, I thank you all very much. Tracy Bridges, Ted Besen, Jason Arthur, I appreciate you getting up with us. Thank you.
Mr. ARTHUR: Thank you, sir.
Mr. BESEN: Thank you.
Mr. BRIDGES: Thank you.
3 shot dead at Va. law school Dean, professor among victims ; student who flunked in custody
Wire Reports
Charleston Gazette (West Virginia)
GRUNDY, Va. - A struggling Nigerian law school student went on a campus shooting spree Wednesday, killing the dean, a professor and a student before he was tackled by students, authorities said.
The attack also wounded three students at the Appalachian School of Law. Two were in surgery Wednesday evening and the third was listed in fair condition.
“When I got there, there were bodies laying everywhere,” said Dr. Jack Briggs, who was one of the first to arrive after the shooting in this tiny mountain community in western Virginia.
Cool Ridge, W.Va., resident Melanie E. Page, a second-year student at the 170-student school, said she did not believe any of the West Virginia students enrolled in the law school were harmed.
Dean L. Anthony Sutin and professor Thomas Blackwell were gunned down in their offices, according to school officials. Police said the third person slain was student Angela Dales, 33.
The 42-year-old suspect, Peter Odighizuwa, had arrived at school to meet with the dean about his academic suspension, which went into effect Wednesday, State Police spokesman Mike Stater said.
Odighizuwa first stopped in the office of professor Dale Rubin to talk about his grades, and as he left reportedly asked Rubin to pray for him, police said.
He then walked to Sutin’s and Blackwell’s offices and shot them with a .380-caliber pistol, Stater said. Witnesses said Odighizuwa then went downstairs into a common area and opened fire on a crowd of students, killing Dales and seriously wounding three others.
“I saw one of the girls that was shot and she was screaming for a tourniquet,” said former Charleston, W.Va., resident Jeremy Burnside, a student who was in the library when the shooting erupted.
The University of Charleston graduate had seen Odighizuwa earlier in the day. “I knew him from class, and I knew he was mad because he flunked out,” Burnside said.
Todd Ross, 30, of Johnson City, Tenn., was among the students who were outside when Odighizuwa left the building. Ross said the suspect was holding his hands in the air and dropped the gun at his prompting.
Odighizuwa was promptly tackled and “struggled after we got him on the ground, but then just laid there,” Ross said. He said the suspect kept shouting, “I have nowhere to go. I have nowhere to go.’”
The suspect was being held at the Buchanan County Jail on three counts of capital murder and three weapons counts, authorities said.
Ellen Qualls, a spokeswoman for Gov. Mark Warner, said Odighizuwa had a history of mental instability that school officials knew about.
Rubin, the professor who spoke with the suspect moments before the rampage, declined comment after the shooting.
First-year student Justin Marlowe from Richwood, W.Va., said the suspect had been in all of his classes.
“He was a real quiet guy who kept to himself. He didn’t talk to anybody, but he gave no indication that he was capable of something like this,” Marlowe said.
He also said Odighizuwa had flunked out a year ago and “the dean bent over backward to get him enrolled again.”
Odighizuwa had children and a wife, students said. He once told classmates he had no money to feed his children and other students gave him money.
“He’s just a little bit not there,” said Burnside, a former state employee in Charleston.
“He was hostile,” said Charleston resident Eric Wilson, a student at the school. “We called it [a shooting incident] jokingly, but we never thought it would happen.”
Page said she only slightly knew Odighizuwa. “He barely spoke English. No one understood him,” she said.
The private law school was closed for the rest of the week.
The governor, who had served on the school’s board until he took office last week, said he was shocked by the shooting.
“I commend the students who acted swiftly to apprehend the suspect,” Warner said. “My heart goes out to the school and the community. I know that such a close-knit community will feel such a tragedy especially deeply.”
Sutin, a 1984 graduate of Harvard Law School, was also an associate professor at the school. He left the Justice Department to help found the school after working for the Democratic National Committee and Bill Clinton’s campaign in 1992, according to the Web site of Jurist, the Legal Education Network.
Attorney General John Ashcroft issued a statement expressing his condolences to Sutin’s wife and their two children.
The school opened five years ago in a renovated junior high school in Grundy, a town of about 1,100 just a few miles south of the Kentucky and West Virginia state lines.
School officials hope to ease a shortage of lawyers in the coalfields of southwest Virginia, help change the region’s image and foster renewal in Appalachia. The American Bar Association rejected the school’s first application for accreditation in 1999, but the school graduated its first class of 34 in 2000.
There are about 15 faculty members, including alumni of law schools at the University of California at Berkeley and Columbia, Harvard and Howard universities.
“You read about it in other areas, but when it comes home it really hurts,” said state Delegate Jackie Stump of Grundy, fighting back tears as he hung his head and walked away from a news conference in Richmond.
Shooting at Virginia law school kills 3
Roger Alford
Chattanooga Times Free Press (Tennessee)
GRUNDY, Va.—A struggling Nigerian law school student went on a campus shooting spree Wednesday, killing the dean, a professor and a student before he was tackled by students, authorities said.
The attack also wounded three students at the Appalachian School of Law. Two were in surgery Wednesday evening and the third was listed in fair condition.
“When I got there there were bodies laying everywhere,” said Dr. Jack Briggs, who was one of the first to arrive after the shooting in this tiny mountain community in western Virginia.
Dean L. Anthony Sutin and Professor Thomas Blackwell were gunned down in their offices, according to school officials. Police said the third person slain was student Angela Dales, 33.
The 42-year-old suspect, Peter Odighizuwa, had arrived at school to meet with the dean about his academic suspension, which went into effect Wednesday, State Police spokesman Mike Stater said.
Odighizuwa first stopped in the office of Professor Dale Rubin to talk about his grades and as he left reportedly asked Rubin to pray for him, police said.
He then walked to Sutin’s and Blackwell’s offices and shot them with a .380-caliber pistol, Stater said. Witnesses said Odighizuwa then went downstairs into a common area and opened fire on a crowd of students, killing Dales and seriously wounding three others.
Todd Ross, 30, of Johnson City, Tenn., was among the students who were outside when Odighizuwa left the building. Ross said the suspect was holding his hands in the air and dropped the gun at his prompting.
Odighizuwa was promptly tackled and “struggled after we got him on the ground, but then just laid there,” Ross said. He said the suspect kept shouting, “‘I have nowhere to go. I have nowhere to go.”’
The suspect was being held at the Buchanan County Jail on three counts of capital murder and three weapons counts, authorities said.
First-year student Justin Marlowe from Richwood, W.Va., said the suspect had been in all of his classes.
“He was a real quiet guy who kept to himself. He didn’t talk to anybody, but he gave no indication that he was capable of something like this,” Marlowe said.
He also said Odighizuwa had flunked out a year ago and “the dean bent over backward to get him enrolled again.”
Dismissed student killed 3, police say
Roger Alford
Chicago Tribune
A struggling law school student went on a campus shooting spree Wednesday, killing the dean, a professor and a student before he was tackled by students, authorities said.
The attack also wounded three students at the Appalachian School of Law. They were hospitalized in fair condition.
The school’s dean, L. Anthony Sutin, and professor Thomas Blackwell were gunned down in their offices, according to school officials. Police said the third person slain was student Angela Dales, 33.
The suspect, Peter Odighizuwa, 42, was going to meet with the dean about his academic dismissal, which went into effect Wednesday, State Police spokesman Mike Stater said.
Odighizuwa, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Nigeria, had flunked out last year and been allowed to return to the school.
He first stopped in the office of professor Dale Rubin to talk about his grades and as he left reportedly asked Rubin to pray for him, police said.
He walked to Sutin’s and Blackwell’s offices and shot them with a .380-caliber pistol, Stater said. Odighizuwa then went downstairs and opened fire on students, killing Dales and wounding three others.
Todd Ross, 30, of Johnson City, Tenn., was among the students who were outside when Odighizuwa left the building. Ross said the suspect was holding his hands in the air and dropped the gun at his prompting.
Odighizuwa was tackled and “struggled after we got him on the ground, but then just laid there,” Ross said. He said the suspect kept shouting, “I have nowhere to go.”
The suspect was being held at the Buchanan County Jail on three counts of capital murder and three weapons counts, authorities said.
Ellen Qualls, a spokeswoman for Gov. Mark Warner, said Odighizuwa had a history of mental instability that school officials knew about.
The private law school, with an enrollment of about 170 students, was closed for the week.
LAW SCHOOL GUN SPREE KILLS DEAN, TWO OTHERS
Associated Press
The Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN)
A student who had been dismissed from law school went on a campus shooting spree Wednesday, killing the dean, a professor and a student before he was tackled by students, authorities said.
The attack also wounded three female students at the Appalachian School of Law. They were hospitalized in fair condition Wednesday night.
“When I got there, there were bodies laying everywhere,” said Dr. Jack Briggs, one of the first to arrive.
Dean L. Anthony Sutin and professor Thomas Blackwell were gunned down in their offices, according to school officials. Police said the third person slain was student Angela Dales, 33.
Authorities said the 42-year-old suspect, Peter Odighizuwa, had arrived at school to meet with the dean about his academic dismissal, which went into effect Wednesday.
Odighizuwa, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Nigeria, first stopped in professor Dale Rubin’s office to talk about his grades and as he left reportedly asked Rubin to pray for him, police said.
He then walked to Sutin’s and Blackwell’s offices and shot them with a .380-caliber pistol, state police spokesman Mike Stater said. Witnesses said Odighizuwa then went downstairs into a common area and opened fire on students, killing Dales and wounding three others.
Todd Ross, 30, of Johnson City, Tenn., was outside when Odighizuwa left the building. Ross said the suspect was holding his hands in the air and dropped the gun at his prompting.
Odighizuwa was promptly tackled and “struggled after we got him on the ground, but then just laid there,” Ross said. He said the suspect kept shouting, ” ‘I have nowhere to go. I have nowhere to go.’ “
Ellen Qualls, a spokesman for Gov. Mark Warner, said Odighizuwa had a history of mental instability that school officials knew about.
First-year student Justin Marlowe from Richwood, W.Va., said the suspect had been in all of his classes.
“He was a real quiet guy who kept to himself. He didn’t talk to anybody, but he gave no indication that he was capable of something like this,” Marlowe said.
Daily Post (Liverpool)
FOUR students overpowered a gunman who went on a shooting spree at their US college last night, killing three people in what a doctor described as “executions”.
The four students tackled the man who was armed with a .38 pistol and managed to hold him until police arrived at the Appalachian School of Law, in Grundy, Virginia. He had already shot and killed three people, including the dean of the college and one of the professors, and left three female students critically injured.
The doctor who was the first medical worker on the scene said the dean of the school, Anthony Sutin, had been “executed” with shots to the head, and another member of staff had been shot in the back as he lay on the ground.
“It appears as though some of these shots were after one professor was down and they were shot at point blank range, ” said Dr Jack Briggs.
The doctor said the gunman was a foreign exchange student whom he had treated for stress and had been on the point of being told to leave the law school.
“This student was a foreign student who had had difficulty. He flunked out of school last year.
“He was given another chance but this was the end of the first semester. I believe that the dean was about to tell him that he would have to leave.”
Daily Post (Liverpool)
A GUNMAN killed three people and wounded three others during a shooting spree at a law school in the United States today, officials said. Among the dead at the Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, Virginia, was the dean, Anthony Sutin, said Ellen Qualls, spokeswoman for Governor Mark Warner.
She said a student and another member of the faculty were also killed.
State police believe students had arrested the suspect, Qualls said.
Three students were wounded and taken to Buchanan General Hospital. She said the weapon was a .380 semi-automatic handgun.
Anna Adams
Daily Record
A LAW student shot dead three people, including the dean of his school, after seeing his exam results.
A lecturer and a student were also killed and three other students were left fighting for their lives. The bloodbath only ended when brave students overpowered the gunman, who has not been named.
Early reports said the killer was a third-year foreign exchange student who was about to be thrown out of the school due to poor grades.
He ran amok with .380 semi-automatic pistol on the campus of the Appalachian Law School in the sleepy US town of Grundy, Virginia, after seeing his exam results posted on a notice board.
The first medic on the scene said the dean, Anthony Sutin, had been “executed” and the lecturer, Tom Blackwell, had been shot in the back as he lay on the ground.
Dr Jack Briggs said: “They were shot at point-blank range. The dean was shot twice in the head. It appears he was executed.”
The doctor said the gunman had flunked out of the school last year but had been given one last chance to make the grade. However, he was still failing.
The doctor added: “The person who did the shooting was a patient of mine. I saw him about six months ago. He was complaining of stress.”
“He was a timebomb waiting to go off.”
The college has around 170 students and was set up in 1997 to help the run -down coal mining area’s economy.
Failing student shoots three dead at law college
Ben Fenton
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH(LONDON)
THREE people including a former assistant US attorney general were shot dead by a disaffected law school student last night.
Three female students were wounded when the man, who was on the verge of being expelled, opened fire.
Two professors at the school in rural Virginia were “executed at point blank range” in front of their secretaries and the third victim, a student, was shot at random as the gunman emerged into a crowded lounge.
Police said that Peter Odighizuma, 43, a foreign student who was armed with a semi-automatic pistol, was then tackled and arrested by students of the Appalachian School of Law in the small town of Grundy.
The dead were Anthony Sutin, the dean, another professor and a female student at the school, police said.
Mr Sutin served under Janet Reno in the Clinton administration and was legal adviser to Al Gore, the Democrat presidential candidate, in the 2000 election campaign. The three injured, all of whom are in critical condition, were also shot randomly as the man started to look for additional victims.
Dr Jack Briggs, who tended the dead and wounded, said the death toll would have been greater if the gunman had had a bigger magazine in his gun. He was pulled to the ground by students when he ran out of bullets.
Dr Briggs, who is also the county coroner, said the killer had difficulty during his first year and had left.
“He came back again to try to start again, but he was failing again and I think they were ready to bring him in and tell him that, so he was ready to take his anger out on those who he felt were responsible,” Dr Briggs said.
The doctor added that he had treated the gunman for stress about six months ago.
“He was a timebomb waiting to go off,” Dr Briggs said.
3 KILLED, 3 WOUNDED IN LAW SCHOOL SHOOTING DISMISSED STUDENT GOES ON FATAL SPREE
Associated Press
Daily Press (Newport News, VA)
A student who had been dismissed from law school went on a shooting spree Wednesday, killing the school’s dean, a professor and a student before other students tackled him, officials said.
Three students were injured in the hail of gunfire.
L. Anthony Sutin, dean of the Appalachian School of Law, and Professor Thomas Blackwell were gunned down in their offices, according to school officials. The third person slain was student Angela Dales, 33, of Vansant, said State Police spokesman Mike Stater.
The suspect, Peter Odighizuwa, went to the school to meet with Sutin about his dismissal, which went into effect Wednesday, authorities said. Odighizuwa first stopped by the office of Professor Dale Rubin to talk about his grades, and as he left he reportedly asked Rubin to pray for him, Stater said.
Rubin, reached by telephone, declined to comment.
After visiting Rubin, Odighizuwa went to Sutin’s and Blackwell’s offices and shot them both with a .380-caliber pistol, Stater said.
Odighizuwa then went downstairs into a common area and opened fire on a crowd, said Dr. Jack Briggs, who has a private practice a half-mile from the school.
“When I got there there were bodies laying everywhere,” Briggs said.
Briggs said he had treated Odighizuwa in the past year. He described Odighizuwa as a Nigerian who had flunked out last year and been allowed to return. Odighizuwa was known on campus as “Peter O” and was a naturalized U.S. citizen, authorities and students said.
He is being held in the Buchanan County Jail on three counts of capital murder and three counts of using a firearm in the commission of a felony, authorities said. Ellen Qualls, spokeswoman for Gov. Mark Warner, said Odighizuwa, 42, had a history of mental instability that school officials were aware of.
Warner is a former member of the school’s board of trustees.
“I’m shocked and deeply saddened. I commend the students who acted swiftly to apprehend the suspect, who is now in custody. My heart goes out to the school and the community,” he said.
After the shootings, Odighizuwa left the building and was tackled and held down by several male students, including 30- year-old Todd Ross of Johnson City, Tenn.
“He came out and walked down on the sidewalk, had his hands up in the air with the gun. At some point I yelled his name and told him to drop the gun and to get on the ground,” Ross said.
Odighizuwa dropped the gun, and another student then confronted him and distracted him.
“And then I ran across and tackled him,” Ross said.
Two or three other students then helped him subdue Odighizuwa.
Odighizuwa “struggled after we got him on the ground, but then just laid there,” Ross said. He said Odighizuwa kept shouting, ‘“I have nowhere to go. I have nowhere to go.”’
School president Lucius Ellsworth was in Richmond for a meeting with government officials Wednesday and flew back to Grundy when he learned about the shootings.
“Each of us is suffering, but as a family, we can find strength to pass through this terrible dark and tragic valley,” he told reporters at an evening news conference.
Hospital officials identified the three wounded students as Rebecca Brown, 38, of Roanoke; Martha Madeline Short, 37, of Grundy; and Stacy Beans, 22, of Berea, Ky. Amy Stevens, a spokeswoman for Wellmont Health Systems, said Short was in fair condition, and Beans and Brown were in fair condition after surgery Wednesday evening.
Justin Marlowe, a first-year law student from Richwood, W.Va., said the suspect had been in all of his classes.
“He was a real quiet guy who kept to himself. He didn’t talk to anybody, but he gave no indication that he was capable of something like this,” Marlowe said.
Marlowe said Odighizuwa flunked out of school a year ago and “the dean bent over backwards to get him enrolled again.”
Blackwell, the professor who was killed, taught classes in contracts that Odighizuwa took during the fall and winter up to the time of his dismissal, students said.
The private law school has an enrollment of about 170 students. It will be closed the remainder of the week, officials said. Local elementary, middle and high schools were locked down for an hour after the shootings.
Sutin, a 1984 graduate of Harvard Law School, also was an associate professor at the school. He left a Justice Department position as an assistant attorney general to found the school after working for the Democratic National Committee and Bill Clinton’s campaign in 1992, according to the Web site of Jurist, the Legal Education Network.
“My thoughts and prayers go out to Mr. Sutin’s wife, Margaret, their two children and to all of their family and friends,” said Attorney General John Ashcroft.
TIME LINE
Here is a time line of the events leading to the dismissal, according to Chris Clifton, financial aid officer at the school:
* Fall 2000: Odighizuwa is put on academic probation.
* Spring 2001: Odighizuwa is dismissed.
* Fall 2001: Odighizuwa is reinstated after appealing his dismissal.
* Tuesday, Jan. 15: Odighizuwa is dismissed for good after failing to maintain the necessary grades.
* Wednesday, Jan. 16: Authorities say Odighizuwa came to the school to meet with the dean and went on a shooting spree, killing three people and wounding three more.
- The Associated Press
Three dead, three wounded as student goes on shooting spree
Michael Beach
The Daily Telegraph (Sydney, Australia)
A FAILED law student executed two professors
then shot dead a fellow student inside a small American university today.
Three more students were in a critical condition after being shot as they ran through the corridors of the Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, Virginia.
The gunman, believed to be a foreign exchange student from Nigeria, was wrestled to the ground and disarmed of his .380mm automatic pistol by four other students.
The dead included the university’s dean, Anthony Sutin, 41, who was an adviser on Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign and served as a high-ranking legal counsel in the Justice Department.
Local physician Dr Jack Briggs, who had treated the gunman on several occasions, was the first doctor to arrive after the shootings.
“The scene was a disaster,” Dr Briggs said today.
He said Mr Sutin and another professor had both been shot at point-blank range in an apparent revenge-based attack.
“The gunman had flunked out of school last year,” Dr Briggs said today.
“He had been allowed an opportunity to come back and complete the semester again. But I believe that the dean was about to tell him he was no longer going to be able to come back.”
After killing the professors, the gunman began shooting randomly at fellow students.
One died after being shot in the neck and back.
Three others, suffering bullet wounds to their abdomens, were flown to a trauma centre in neighbouring Tennessee for emergency surgery.
The Appalachian School of Law was only founded four years ago to help ease a shortage of lawyers in the south-west Virginia mining towns.
The small school has 170 students and 15 professors.
The killings came a day after a high school student evaded a metal detector to shoot two classmates at the Martin Luther King Jnr school in Manhattan.
Those two students were alive today but in a serious condition, authorities said.
That shooting apparently stemmed from a dispute over a girl, authorities said today.
School officials said that the suspect was an 18-year-old who recently had not been attending school.
No arrests had yet been made, police spokesman Lieutenant Brian Burke said.
Daily Star
A GUN-toting student killed three people and wounded three others last night after running amok at a US college.
Brave students at the law college wrestled him to the ground. He struck after bursting into a common room at Appalachian School of Law, Grundy, Virginia.
The dead included the college’s dean, Anthony Sutin, a second member of staff and a student.
The killer, thought to have been angry with staff, used a .380 semiautomatic handgun.
Police, ambulances and counsellors rushed to the scene as the college was evacuated.
The three injured were taken to hospital.
Staff member Alicia O’Quin said: “This is usually a very quiet campus, very intimate.”
State Governor Mark Warner’s spokeswoman said: “Students bravely tackled the gunman.
“But we do not know the gunman’s motives at this time.”
Police arrested the suspect after students held him down until they arrived.
3 KILLED BY COLLEGE EXAM DUNCE
Daily Star
A NUT who was angry after flunking his law exams killed his dean, a professor and a fellow student in a shooting spree at his US college last night.
Peter Odighizuma, 43, also critically injured three others when he stormed a commonroom at the college and opened up with a .380 semi-automatic pistol. Four students wrestled the Nigerian and held him until police arrived.
Dr Jack Briggs, who counselled the student for stress six months ago, said: “Two shots were fired into the dean’s head. It appears he was executed.
“It looked like a warzone. There were bodies everywhere.”
He said: “The gunman flunked out of school last year. He got another chance, but I believe the Dean was about to tell him he had to leave.”
Police, ambulances and counsellors rushed to the Appalachian School of Law, in Grundy, Virginia.
The dean, Anthony Sutin, was shot in front of his secretary.
Daily Star
A GUN-toting student killed three people and wounded three others last night after running amok at a US college.
Brave students at the law college wrestled him to the ground. He struck after bursting into a common room at Appalachian School of Law, Grundy, Virginia.
The dead included the college’s dean, Anthony Sutin, a second member of staff and a student.
The killer, thought to have been angry with staff, used a .380 semi-automatic handgun.
Police, ambulances and counsellors rushed to the scene as the college was evacuated. The three injured were taken to hospital. Staff member Alicia O’Quin said: “This is usually a very quiet campus, very intimate.”
State Governor Mark Warner’s spokeswoman said: “Students bravely tackled the gunman.
“But we do not know the gunman’s motives at this time.”
Police arrested the suspect after students held him down until they arrived.
Detroit Free Press
NEW YORK
Helper in New Year bomb plot sentenced
An Algerian man was sentenced Wednesday to the maximum 24 years in prison for his role in a failed plot to detonate a suitcase bomb at the Los Angeles airport amid turn-of-the-century celebrations.
Mokhtar Haouari, 32, was convicted by a Manhattan jury in July on federal charges that he supplied fake IDs and cash to two others in the plot.
The plot—planned for Jan. 1, 2000—was foiled when its mastermind, Ahmed Ressam, was arrested at Port Angeles, Wash., while trying to enter the United States from Canada in a car with explosives in December 1999. Ressam had trained in terrorist camps financed by Osama bin Laden, whom the United States accuses of masterminding the Sept. 11 attacks.
GRUNDY, Va.
3 dead in shooting spree
A law school student upset about his grades went on a shooting spree Wednesday, killing three people and critically wounding three others before he was wrestled to the ground by students, officials said.
Those killed included a student, a faculty member and the dean of the Appalachian School of Law, said Ellen Qualls, spokeswoman for Gov. Mark Warner.
The student, who used a .380-caliber handgun, was not identified.
LAUDERHILL, Fla.
Plaque honors wrong man
A plaque intended to honor black actor James Earl Jones at a Florida celebration of the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. instead paid tribute to James Earl Ray, the man who killed the black civil rights leader in 1968, officials said Wednesday.
The plaque read, “Thank you James Earl Ray for keeping the dream alive.”
Texas plaque manufacturer Merit Industries blamed a typographical error. It was being corrected before Jones’ Saturday visit to the Ft. Lauderdale suburb.
Detroit Free Press
NEW YORK
Helper in New Year bomb plot sentenced
Mokhtar Haouari, 32, was sentenced Wednesday to the maximum 24 years in prison for his role in a failed plot to detonate a suitcase bomb at the Los Angeles airport on Jan. 1, 2000.
In July, a Manhattan jury convicted Haouari, an Algerian who lives in Canada, on federal charges that he supplied fake IDs and cash to two others in the plot.
The plot was apparently foiled when another man was arrested at Port Angeles, Wash., in a car with explosives.
GRUNDY, Va.
3 dead in shooting spree
A student upset about his grades at the Appalachian School of Law killed three people and wounded three others with a handgun Wednesday before being wrestled to the ground, officials said.
Killed were dean L. Anthony Sutin, professor Thomas Blackwell and student Angela Dales.
Peter Odighizuwa, 42, was being held on three counts of capital murder and three weapons counts.
PHILADELPHIA
Cops charged in cover-up
Two ranking police officers were charged Wednesday with trying to cover up a 1998 car accident after a night of drinking.
Capt. James Brady and Capt. Joseph DiLacqua turned themselves in. Brady had handed in his retirement papers Tuesday.
LAUDERHILL, Fla.
Plaque honors wrong man
A plaque intended to honor black actor James Earl Jones at a Florida celebration of the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. instead read, “Thank you James Earl Ray for keeping the dream alive.” Ray is the man who killed the civil rights leader in 1968.
Herbert Miller, the owner of plaque manufacturer Merit Industries, called it “an honest error.” The plaque was being corrected before Jones’ Saturday visit to the Ft. Lauderdale suburb.
ROUNDUP: Disgruntled law student shoots six, kills three - coroner
Deutsche Presse-Agentur
A Nigerian student recently suspended by his U.S. law school went on a shooting spree Wednesday, killing three people and wounding three more, a local coroner and physician said.
The gunman used a. 38-calibre semi-automatic handgun at point- blank range to shoot the school’s dean and a professor, killing both men, before opening fire on his fellow students in Grundy, Virginia, said Doctor Jack Briggs.
One student was killed, and three more were injured in the rampage at the Appalachian School of Law. One woman was in fair condition and two more were in surgery, hospital staff said. After the rampage, the gunman was tackled by four male students before being arrested, said Briggs, whose medical practice is near the school.
Virginia state police identified the man they they were holding in the shooting as as Peter Odighizuma, 43. They did not immediately release any further details or announce charges.
One victim, the school’s dean, was Anthony Sutin, a former U.S. Justice Department official who worked on the 1992 election campaign for former president Bill Clinton.
Professor Thomas Blackwell was also shot dead in his office in the small law school, located in the Appalachia mountain range, about 500 kilometres southwest of the capital Washington.
Briggs told broadcaster CNN that he knew the gunman, who had complained of stress about half a year ago and in hindsight had been “a time bomb ready to go off”.
The student had flunked out of the school last year and, after a second attempt, had been suspended for poor grades.
“So he took his anger out on the people he felt were responsible for him leaving the school,” the doctor said. “I had no idea it would affect him this way.”
The faculty members were “executed”, said Briggs, who described gunpowder burns on the shirt of one victim who was “obviously shot at point-blank range”. dpa fz ff
UPDATE: Disgruntled law student shoots six, kills three - coroner
Deutsche Presse-Agentur
A Nigerian student recently suspended by his U.S. law school went on a shooting spree Wednesday, killing three people and wounding three more, a local coroner and physician said. The gunman used a. 38-calibre semi-automatic handgun at point- blank range to shoot the school’s dean and a professor, killing both men, before opening fire on his fellow students in Grundy, Virginia, said Doctor Jack Briggs.
One student was killed, and three more were injured in the rampage at the Appalachian School of Law. One woman was in fair condition, and two more were in surgery, hospital staff said. After the rampage, the gunman was tackled by four male students before being arrested, said Briggs, whose medical practice is near the school.
Virginia state police identified the man they were holding in the shooting as as Peter Odighizuma, 43. They did not immediately release any further details or announce charges.
One victim, the school’s dean, was Anthony Sutin, a former U.S. Justice Department official who worked on the 1992 election campaign of former president Bill Clinton.
Professor Thomas Blackwell was also shot dead in his office in the small law school, located in the Appalachia mountain range, about 500 kilometres southwest of the capital Washington.
Briggs told broadcaster CNN that he knew the gunman, who had complained about stress half a year ago and in hindsight had been “a time bomb ready to go off”.
The student had flunked out of the school last year and, after a second attempt, had been suspended for poor grades.
“So he took his anger out on the people he felt were responsible for him leaving the school,” the doctor said. “I had no idea it would affect him this way.”
The faculty members were “executed”, said Briggs, who described gunpowder burns on the shirt of one victim who was “obviously shot at point-blank range”. dpa fz ff
Evening Mail
A GUNMAN killed three people and wounded three others during a shooting spree at a law school in the United States today, officials said.
Among the dead at the Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, Virginia, was the dean, Anthony Sutin, said a spokeswoman for Governor Mark Warner.
She said a student and another member of the faculty were also killed.
State police believe students had arrested the suspect, Qualls said. She said the weapon was a .380 semiautomatic handgun.
Grundy is in the Appalachian foothills, 120 miles west of Roanoke.
The Express
THREE people were killed and three others were wounded when a gunman ran amok at a US law college. The suspect was later seized by students, police said last night.
One of the dead was named as Anthony Sutin, dean of the Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, Virginia, 200 miles west of Washington, DC.
A student and another member of the faculty were also killed, and three badly injured students were taken to hospital.
The law school, which opened in 1997, has 170 pupils.
Toby Moore
The Express
A DISGRUNTLED student shot dead a law school professor, the head teacher and a fellow pupil in a shooting spree at the school in Virginia yesterday.
Peter Odighizuma, 43, who had been suspended from the Appalachian School of Law earlier in the day, returned with a handgun and killed the three at around 6pm British time.
Three other students, all women, were wounded when Nigerian foreign exchange student Odighizuma opened fire on the college campus. “It looked like a war zone, ” said a witness to the carnage.
“There was blood all over. There was just a sea of bodies everywhere.”
Among the dead was the head of the school, Anthony Sutin, who served under former President Clinton at the Justice Department and was a leading adviser to Al Gore during his presidential election campaign last year.
Odighizuma was subdued by other students before police arrived. State policeman Jason Miles said: “He was suspended from school for some unknown reason and came back. He used a .380 semi-automatic handgun.”
Dr Jack Briggs, who knew the adult victims, spoke of his shock.
He said the dean and professor were “well liked by everybody”.
“It was not a matter of picking out a professor who has picked you out unfairly and shooting him, ” said Dr Briggs.
“It was just a matter of him releasing his anger at the world, I guess.”
The law school, which opened just five years ago in Grundy, a small town at the foothills of the Appalachian mountains, has 170 students.
It was opened with the hope of easing a historic shortage of lawyers in the coal fields of south-west Virginia, to help change the region’s image and foster renewal in Appalachia.
The shootings came a day after two teenagers were shot in the back by a pupil at a high school in New York. The first shooting at a school in the city since 1994.
Both victims, one 15 and the other 17, were said to be in a “satisfactory” condition at the Manhattan hospital where they are being treated.
Tim Baylor, a spokesman for two hospitals where the injured were taken, said the three were in a “fair” condition. Two required surgery.
The shootings at Grundy are just the latest in the tragic history of school murders in the US.
The worst massacre took place at Columbine High School, Colorado, in April 1999 when 15 students were killed.
In March 2000, two people died and 13 were wounded at Santana High School in California.
A week before, four students and two teachers were wounded when an 18-year-old opened fire at a school in El Cajon, California.
The third shooting that month took place at a school in Indiana when a teenage boy was killed by one of his schoolmates.
Financial Times (London)
Three killed at US law school
A gunman killed three people and wounded three at the Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, Virginia, officials said. The dead included the dean.
Financial Times (London)
Three killed at US law school
A gunman killed three people and wounded three at the Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, Virginia. The dead included the dean. Police believe students apprehended the suspect.
3 slain in shooting spree at Virginia law school Ex-Clay lawyer met with suspect
Florida Times-Union (Jacksonville, FL)
GRUNDY, Va.—Minutes before a struggling law school student allegedly went on a campus shooting spree yesterday, killing the dean, a professor and a student, he was in the office of a former Northeast Florida attorney, complaining about grades, the lawyer said.
The attack also wounded three students at the Appalachian School of Law before the gunman was tackled by students and taken into custody. The wounded students were in fair condition.
Just before the attacks, the gunman was in the office of Stewart Harris, 40, a former Clay County lawyer who began teaching at the school last fall.
‘He did not seem the least bit agitated, the least bit violent,’ Harris said last night in a telephone interview with the Times-Union. ‘He was complaining about his grade. He was not one of my students.’
Harris said he talked to the man, later identified as 42-year-old Peter Odighizuwa, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Nigeria, for about a minute, just before lunch. Odighizuwa had been dismissed from the school.
When Harris returned from eating, police were on a scene Harris described as ‘chaos.’
Jack Briggs, a physician who practices near the school and was one of the first to arrive after the shooting in this tiny mountain community in western Virginia, echoed Harris.
‘When I got there there were bodies laying everywhere,’ Briggs said.
Dean L. Anthony Sutin and Professor Thomas Blackwell were gunned down in their offices, according to school officials. Police said the third person slain was student Angela Dales, 33.
Odighizuwa had arrived at school to meet with the dean about his academic suspension, which went into effect yesterday, State Police spokesman Mike Stater said.
Odighizuwa first stopped in the office of Professor Dale Rubin to talk about his grades and as he left reportedly asked Rubin to pray for him, police said.
He then walked to Sutin’s and Blackwell’s offices and shot them with a .380-caliber pistol, Stater said. Witnesses said Odighizuwa then went downstairs into a common area and opened fire on a crowd of students, killing Dales and seriously wounding three others.
Harris said his office is next to Blackwell’s and about 50 feet from Sutin’s. Harris said he had known the two men for about a year. He said he only knew Odighizuwa vaguely.
Harris said students had just gotten grades from last semester and it was not unusual to discuss them with instructors.
‘The only thing that was the least bit unusual was that he was not one of my students,’ he said.
Harris, who teaches two classes, said the three wounded students were in his classes.
‘The entire day has been a very tumultuous day,’ he said.
Harris practiced law in Clay County from 1994 to May 2000.
Todd Ross, 30, of Johnson City, Tenn., was among the students who were outside when Odighizuwa left the building. Ross said the suspect was holding his hands in the air and dropped the gun at his prompting.
Odighizuwa was promptly tackled and ‘struggled after we got him on the ground, but then just laid there,’ Ross said. He said the suspect kept shouting, ‘I have nowhere to go. I have nowhere to go.’
Odighizuwa was being held at the Buchanan County Jail on three counts of capital murder and three weapons counts, authorities said.
Ellen Qualls, a spokeswoman for Gov. Mark Warner, said Odighizuwa had a history of mental instability that school officials knew about. Rubin, the professor who spoke with the suspect moments before the rampage, declined comment after the shooting.
First-year student Justin Marlowe from Richwood, W.Va., said Odighizuwa had been in all of his classes.
‘He was a real quiet guy who kept to himself. He didn’t talk to anybody, but he gave no indication that he was capable of something like this,’ Marlowe said.
He also said Odighizuwa had flunked out a year ago and ‘the dean bent over backward to get him enrolled again.’
The private law school, with an enrollment of about 170 students, will close for the rest of the week. Times-Union staff writer Dana Treen contributed to this report.
Law school dean and two others killed by student
Oliver Burkeman
The Guardian (London)
A Nigerian student was being held last night for killing the dean of a small American law school and two other people at the college in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains.
The dean, Anthony Sutin, and a professor were shot dead at close range in what were described as “executions”.
A male student was also killed, and three female students were injured and taken to hospital before the gunman was tackled by four students. Peter Odighizuma, 43, was being held in police custody last night after the shooting at the Appalachian School of Law in the mining town of Grundy, south-west Virginia.
Earlier in the day he had been told that he was to be suspended.
He was already repeating the first year course, having dropped out last year.
Jack Briggs, the first doctor to arrive on the scene, said Mr Odighizuma had attended his surgery complaining of stress six or seven months ago.
He described the student as “a timebomb waiting to go off”.
Lieutenant Jason Miles of the state police said Mr Odighizuma was suspended from school yesterday “for some unknown reason” and returned.
“He used a .38 semi-automatic handgun”.
A spokesman for the Virginia hospital system said two of the three injured students, who were airlifted to hospital, were undergoing surgery . The third was described as stable.
Dr Briggs said the dean and the murdered professor had powder marks on their skin, indicating point-blank executions. Their killing had been witnessed by their secretaries, he added
“It looked like a war zone - there was blood all over,” he added.
Mr Odighizuma was wrestled to the floor by four male students. “They just wanted the guy. They weren’t worried about their own personal safety.”
Sutin, a graduate of Harvard Law School, was a United States attorney during the Clinton administration and chief counsel to Al Gores 2000 presidential campaign.
The Appalachian school was opened in 1997 to remedy a critical shortage of lawyers in the poor coalmining communities of south Virginia, and has about 240 students.
Failed law student kills three at school
Guelph Mercury (Ontario, Canada)
GRUNDY, Va.—A student who had been dismissed from law school went on a campus shooting rampage Wednesday, killing the dean, a professor and a student before he was tackled by students, authorities said.
The attack also wounded three female students at the Appalachian School of Law. They were in hospital in fair condition.
“When I got there, there were bodies laying everywhere,” said Dr. Jack Briggs, one of the first to arrive after the shooting in the tiny mountain community in western Virginia.
Dean L. Anthony Sutin and Prof. Thomas Blackwell were gunned down in their offices, school officials said. Police said the third person slain was student Angela Dales, 33.
Authorities said the 42-year-old suspect, Peter Odighizuwa, had arrived at school to meet with the dean about his academic dismissal, which went into effect Wednesday. Briggs said Odighizuwa, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Nigeria, failed last year and had been allowed to return to the school.
Ellen Qualls, a spokeswoman for Gov. Mark Warner, said Odighizuwa had a history of mental instability school officials knew about.
Failed law student kills three at school
Guelph Mercury (Ontario, Canada)
A student who had been dismissed from law school went on a campus shooting rampage Wednesday, killing the dean, a professor and a student before he was tackled by students, authorities said.
The attack also wounded three female students at the Appalachian School of Law. They were in hospital in fair condition.
“When I got there, there were bodies laying everywhere,” said Dr. Jack Briggs, one of the first to arrive after the shooting in the tiny mountain community in western Virginia.
Dean L. Anthony Sutin and Prof. Thomas Blackwell were gunned down in their offices, school officials said. Police said the third person slain was student Angela Dales, 33.
Authorities said the 42-year-old suspect, Peter Odighizuwa, had arrived at school to meet with the dean about his academic dismissal, which went into effect Wednesday. Briggs said Odighizuwa, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Nigeria, failed last year and had been allowed to return to the school.
Ellen Qualls, a spokeswoman for Gov. Mark Warner, said Odighizuwa had a history of mental instability school officials knew about.
Law student with low grades kills three
Roger Alford
Hamilton Spectator (Ontario, Canada)
A law school student upset about his grades went on a shooting spree yesterday, killing three people and critically wounding three others before he was wrestled to the ground by students, officials said.
The victims included the dean of the Appalachian School of Law and a professor who were gunned down in their offices. The third person slain was a student, said Ellen Qualls, a spokeswoman for Gov. Mark Warner.
“When I got there, there were bodies lying everywhere,” said Dr. Jack Briggs, who has a private practice one kilometre from the school in this tiny western Virginia community.
Briggs said he had treated the suspect in the past year. He described the gunman as a Nigerian in his early 40s who had flunked out last year and been allowed to return.
“I think they were getting ready to tell him that he had not made the grade this year,” Briggs said.
Dean L. Anthony Sutin and the professor were “executed” in their offices, Briggs said.
He said the gunman then went downstairs into a common area and opened fire on a crowd of students, killing one and wounding three others. He was tackled by four male students as he left the building.
“They just wanted the guy,” Briggs said. “They weren’t worried about their own personal safety.”
Other details were not immediately available, but Qualls said the weapon used was a .380-calibre semiautomatic handgun.
The three wounded students were in critical condition.
Gunman kills three in law school rampage
Cameron Simpson
The Herald (Glasgow)
A GUNMAN killed three people and wounded three others during a shooting spree at a law school in the western Virginia foothills yesterday.
The killer, armed with a .380 semi-automatic handgun, was later overpowered by four students. The three deaths were described by Jack Briggs, the first medical worker on the scene, as “executions”. Anthony Sutin, the dean of the Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, one of the professors and a student were killed. The wounded, all students, were taken to Buchanan General Hospital, where their conditions were described as critical.
The incident came just a day after a shooting at a school in New York, in which two people were injured.
Dr Briggs said the dean had been “executed” with shots to the head, and another member of staff had been shot in the back as he lay on the ground.
“It appears as though some of these shots were after one professor was down and they were shot at point blank range. It looked like a war zone. There were bodies everywhere.”
He said the gunman was a “foreign exchange student” and had been on the point of being told to leave the law school, which has around 170 students.
“He took his anger out on the people who, I think, he thought were responsible for him leaving the school.
“The person who did the shooting was a patient of mine. I saw him about six months ago. He was complaining of stress. He was a timebomb waiting to go off,” said Dr Briggs.
Alicia O’Quin, a special assistant to the president of the law school, said a male student had apparently entered a student lounge area on the campus at about 1pm local time and opened fire.
She said it was unclear how many people were in the lounge at the time. “Nothing like this has ever happened before, either here or even in this county. It’s usually a very quiet campus, very intimate.”
Mark Warner, the state governor, said he was shocked and saddened by the shooting. “I commend the students who acted swiftly to apprehend the suspect, who is now in custody.
“My heart goes out to the school and the community. I know that such a close -knit community will feel such a tragedy especially deeply.”
Mr Sutin, a 1984 graduate of Harvard Law School, was also an associate professor at the school.
The private law school opened five years ago in a renovated junior high school in Grundy, a town of about 1100 just a few miles south of the Kentucky and West Virginia state lines.
Gunman kills three in law school shooting
Cameron Simpson
The Herald (Glasgow)
A GUNMAN killed three people and wounded three others yesterday in a shooting spree at a law school in the western Virginia foothills.
The dead included the dean of the Appalachian School of Law, Anthony Sutin, one of the professors, and a student. The gunman was named as Peter Odighizuma, a 43-year-old Nigerian student who had been suspended. Armed with a .380 semi-automatic handgun, he was overpowered by four students after the killings, which Jack Briggs, the first medical worker on the scene, described as “executions”. The attack in the town of Grundy came just a day after a shooting at a school in New York that injured two people.
The three wounded, all students, were taken to hospital where they were described as critical.
Dr Briggs said the dean had been “executed” with shots to the head, and another member of staff had been shot in the back as he lay on the ground.
He said Odighizuma, a foreign exchange student, was about to be told to leave the law school, which has around 170 students.
“He was a timebomb waiting to go off,” said Dr Briggs.
GUN-TOTING STUDENT ‘EXECUTES’ THREE AT VIRGINIA LAW SCHOOL
Rupert Cornwell
The Independent (London)
A FOREIGN student went on a shooting rampage at a small law school in the remote west of Virginia yesterday, killing three people and wounding three. One of the dead was the dean of the school.
Peter Odighizuma, 43, was believed to have been suspended from the Appalachian School of Law in the small town of Grundy earlier in the day, before returning with a .380 semi-automatic pistol. Jack Briggs, a local doctor and coroner who was one of the first to the scene, said the dean, Anthony Sutin - the chief legal adviser to the Democrat Al Gore in his failed bid for the American presidency in 2000 - and a professor had been “executed” in their offices.
Powder marks on their clothes showed that they had been shot dead at point -blank range. The gunman then emerged, firing indiscriminately at other students.
In the pandemonium, one student was killed and three others were critically wounded before four male students overpowered the gunman. “They just wanted the guy. They weren’t worried about their own personal safety,” said Dr Briggs. “Blood and bodies were everywhere.”
Last night, Mr Odighizuma was being held in custody in Grundy. Dr Briggs described him as a Nigerian who had failed his first year.
The three wounded students, one of whom had been struck by a bullet in the back and two hit in the chest, were airlifted to a nearby hospital. Dr Briggs described their condition as “critical”.
The incident is the latest in a string of shootings in schools and factories in the United States in recent weeks. The attack has had a shattering impact on a small and close-knit community in one of the poorest parts of the state, deep in the Appalachian mountains.
The school was established in 1997 to ease a shortage of lawyers and to spur development in Grundy, which has a population of only 1,400. Mark Warner, the Democratic Governor of Virginia, is a former member of the school’s board, whose first class of 34 students graduated in 2000. The school currently has 170 students and 15 members of faculty.
Mr Sutin, a graduate of Harvard Law School, was made principal with a staff of just 15. A former Justice Department official, he left the Clinton administration to become dean of the school.
Disgruntled law student kills three in US school
Patrick Smyth
The Irish Times
A disgruntled law student yesterday shot and killed the college dean, another member of staff and a fellow student in a small rural college in Virginia. Three others were injured before students subdued the killer, according to state police.
The Appalachian School of Law is in Grundy, Buchanan County, near the Kentucky border. It has a student body of only 170. Early reports said that the foreign exchange student had been upset at his grades and had opened fire with a semi-automatic pistol.
He was tackled and apprehended by his fellow students after killing the dean, Dr Anthony Sutin, and firing on others. He is now in custody. “It looked like a war zone,” reported Dr Jack Briggs, the local coroner who was one of the first on the scene. He said the killer was a former patient of his whom he treated for stress. He believed the student was about to be expelled from the school.
Dr Sutin was a former US Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs who served in the Clinton administration under the former Attorney General, Ms Janet Reno. The law school opened in 1997 in a renovated junior high school in this small town 120 miles west of Roanoke.
The school was opened to ease a historic shortage of lawyers in the coalfields of south-west Virginia, and to help change the region’s image and foster renewal in Appalachia. The first class of 34 graduated in 2000. The school has about 15 academic staff.
Despite a number of high-profile school-killing incidents, including the Columbine high-school massacre, US schools are becoming safer. There are fewer violent deaths every year, although there has been an increase in incidents involving multiple victims.
The FBI Uniform Crime Reports showed that between 1993 and 1999, youth homicides decreased 68 per cent to their lowest rate since 1966. In 1998, the National Crime Victimisation Survey showed that youth crime overall was at its lowest rate in the survey’s 25-year history.
The number of children killed in high-school violence is about half the number of Americans killed every year by lightning. A federal study of 253 school-related violent deaths published last week found that in most cases there were warning signs, such as a note, diary entry or a threat. The killings were usually not random but stemmed from personal disputes over romance or money, or were related to gang activity.
Student killers were more likely to have been bullied by peers, to have been involved in discipline problems at school or uninvolved in school activities.
Nina Gilbert, Greer Fay Cashman, Gil Hoffman, Tal Muscal, AP
The Jerusalem Post
Burg ready to speak to PA body in Ramallah
Knesset Speaker Avraham Burg yesterday welcomed an invitation to address the Palestinian Legislative Assembly in Ramallah. Burg said, however, he is waiting for a formal invitation for him and a Knesset delegation to meet with the Palestinian lawmakers.
“Every opportunity must be exploited to open dialogue and end the cycle of violence,” Burg said from the US, after he learned of the invitation from broadcast on Israel Radio. Nina Gilbert Katsav interview with Egyptian TV to air today
President Moshe Katsav is to appear on Good Morning Egypt today, when Egyptian Television broadcasts an hour- long interview with Katsav filmed at Beit Hanassi, from 8 a.m. - 9 a.m.
In the interview, which Katsav called a goodwill gesture, the president invited Egyptian President Hosni Mubarek to pay a state visit to Israel, and also stressed the necessity for Egypt to return its ambassador to Israel. Katsav said exemplary Egyptian leadership has facilitated peace with Israel, and contrasted the Egyptian leadership with that of the Palestinians. Katsav has said PA Chairman Yasser Arafat must take strategic decisions to bring about an end to terrorism, and that he must emulate the courage of the late Egyptian president Anwar Sadat.
Greer Fay Cashman
High hopes for late-night budget meeting
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Finance Minister Silvan Shalom, and Shas chairman Eli Yishai met late last night at the Prime Minister’s Office in an effort to hammer out a compromise on the Large Families Law, the last obstacle to passing the budget. Spokesman for Shalom and Yishai said progress had been made in talks throughout the day and expressed confidence about last night’s meeting, which ended after press time. Shas and United Torah Judaism rejected one compromise, whereby child allowances would paid only for children under 16. Yishai prefers limiting the allowances to families that receive a monthly income of less than NIS 10,500. Gil Hoffman
PM may oust Government Companies head
The Prime Minister’s Office said Prime Minister Ariel Sharon expressed his dissatisfaction last night with Government Companies Authority Director Yaron Jacobs. Sharon said Jacobs has not acted according to his instructions, despite a September meeting during which both men discussed Jacob’s actions. Jacobs has been a main supporter of privatizing state-owned companies. Sharon called on Jacobs not to request a renewal of his special contract, which expires March 31. They will meet Tuesday. If the prime minister decides not to extend the contract, Civil Service Commissioner Shmuel Hollander will head a search committee for a new authority head. Tal Muscal
Three slain in shooting spree at US law school
GRUNDY, Virginia (AP) - A gunman killed three people and wounded three others during a shooting spree yesterday at the Appalachian School of Law in the western Virginia foothills, officials said. The slain included a student, a faculty member, and the dean, L. Anthony Sutin. State police believe students were able to apprehend the suspect, a spokeswoman said. Details on the suspect or the capture were not immediately available, but the weapon used was a .380-caliber semiautomatic handgun. Three students were wounded but their conditions were not immediately known. The private law school has an enrollment of about 170 students.
Students grab college gunman after ‘executions’
The Journal
The Journal (Newcastle, UK)
USA: Four students last night overpowered a gunman who “executed” three people at their college.
The four tackled the man as he wielded a .380 semi-automatic pistol and held him until police arrived at the Appalachian School of Law, in Grundy, Virginia.
He had shot and killed three people, including the dean of the college and a professor, and wounded three other women students. One was last night in a faire condition, the other two were critical and undergoing surgery.
The first medical worker on the scene said dean Anthony Sutin had been “executed” with shots to the head and another member of staff had been shot in the back as he lay on the ground.
“They were shot at point blank range,” Dr Jack Briggs said.
“It looked like a war zone. There were bodies everywhere.”
The two teachers were apparently shot in front of their secretaries before the gunman went on a spree in which he shot randomly at students.
The doctor said: “This student was a foreign student who flunked out of school.”
He was given another chance but the dean was about to tell him that he would have to go.
Dr Briggs said the three shot students had been helicoptered to hospitals near the small town in a rural area of the Appalachian Mountains.
He said the gunman had been a patient of his. “I saw him about six months ago. He was complaining of stress. He was a timebomb waiting to go off. “
The college was set up in 1997 to help the run-down coal mining area’s economy.
Three Killed at Virginia Law School
Associated Press
The Legal Intelligencer
Grundy, Va. - A gunman killed three people and wounded three others during a shooting spree yesterday at a tiny law school in the western Virginia foothills, officials said.
The slain included a student, a faculty member and the dean of the Appalachian School of Law, L. Anthony Sutin, said Ellen Qualls, a spokeswoman for Gov. Mark Warner, served on the school board until he took office last week.
State police believe students were able to apprehend the suspect, Qualls said. Details on the suspect or the capture were not immediately available, but Qualls said the weapon used was a .380-caliber semiautomatic handgun.
Three students were wounded and taken to Buchanan General Hospital, Qualls said. Their conditions were not immediately known.
The private law school has an enrollment of about 170 students.
The governor said he was shocked and saddened by the shooting.
“I commend the students who acted swiftly to apprehend the suspect, who is now in custody,” Warner said. “My heart goes out to the school and the community. I know that such a close-knit community will feel such a tragedy especially deeply.”
Sutin, a 1984 graduate of Harvard Law School, was also an associate professor at the school. He previously worked on election law and campaign finance issues at the Hogan & Hartson law firm in Washington and worked for the Democratic National Committee and Bill Clinton’s campaign in 1992, according to the Web site of Jurist, the Legal Education Network.
The school opened five years ago in a renovated junior high school in Grundy, a town of about 1,100 just a few miles south of the Kentucky and West Virginia state lines.
School founders hope to ease a shortage of lawyers in the coalfields of southwest Virginia, help change the region’s image and foster renewal in Appalachia. The American Bar Association rejected the school’s first application for accreditation in 1999.
The school graduated its first class of 34 in 2000. There are about 15 faculty members, including alumni of law schools at the University of California at Berkeley and Columbia, Harvard and Howard universities.
LAW STUDENT KILLS 3 AT APPALACHIAN COLLEGE;
Lee Mueller
Lexington Herald Leader (Kentucky)
GRUNDY, Va.—Three people were shot to death yesterday at a small Appalachian law school near the Kentucky border by a troubled student who apparently had just flunked out for a second time, officials said.
Three students, including a woman who graduated from Berea College, were injured in the shooting at the Appalachian School of Law before the alleged attacker was wrestled to the ground and handcuffed by other students.
Killed were the school’s dean, L. Anthony Sutin, 42, and Professor Thomas F. Blackwell, 41, both of Grundy, who were gunned down in their offices; and first-year student Angela Denise Dales, 33, of Vansant, Va.
Peter Odighizuwa, 42, a native of Nigeria who was living in Grundy, was charged with three counts of capital murder and three counts of use of a firearm in the commission of a felony, said Mike Stater, public information officer for the Virginia State Police. Odighizuwa was being held last night in the Buchanan County, Va., Jail.
“When I got there, there were bodies laying everywhere,” said Dr. Jack Briggs, who has a practice a half-mile from the school, which is 13 miles from the Pike County border.
Student Chase Goodman, 27, of Pikeville, described a horrifying scene of screaming and blood.
“There were pools of blood all over,” Goodman said.
Stater said Odighizuwa went to the school to discuss his academic dismissal, which went into effect yesterday, with Professor Dale Reuben. As he left Reuben’s office, “he reportedly asked professor Reuben to pray for him,” Stater said.
Odighizuwa went into the offices of Sutin and Blackwell about 1:15 p.m. and opened fire with a Jennings .380 semiautomatic pistol, Stater said. Sutin and Blackwell died at the scene.
Odighizuwa then went downstairs into a common area and opened fire on the students, killing one and injuring three, Stater said.
Among the injured was Stacey Beans, 22, a first-year student who was shot once in the chest, police said. She was taken to Bristol, Tenn., Regional Hospital, where she underwent surgery and was listed last night in fair condition.
Beans, a 2001 graduate of Berea College, is from Paducah.
Her sister, Stephanie Medley of Paducah, said Beans wanted to go to school in Grundy to escape the dangers of a big city.
“They wanted to go someplace where they would feel safe. That was the main attraction,” Medley said. “It was a safe place, they thought.”
Also injured were first-year student Rebecca Claire Brown, 38, of Roanoke, Va., who was shot in the abdomen and the arm, and second-year student Martha Madeline Short, 37, of Grundy, who was shot in the throat. Both were in fair condition last night at a Kingsport, Tenn., hospital.
The school’s 3.5-acre campus, which opened in 1997 in the town of 1,100, includes a building constructed in 1939 as Grundy High School and another building that had been a junior high.
Todd Ross, 30, of Johnson City, Tenn., a third-year law student, said he was standing outside the former high school building when he heard five to seven shots coming from the direction of the student lounge, which is in that building.
He said he saw Odighizuwa come out of the building with his gun pointed upward. Ross said he yelled at Odighizuwa to throw down the gun, and he did.
“I asked him to step over toward the flagpole and get down on the ground,” Ross said.
At that point, Ross said, another student, former Wilmington, N.C., police officer Ted Besen, approached Odighizuwa, who swung at him. Ross then wrestled Odighizuwa to the ground.
A third student, also a former police officer, went to his car, got a pair of handcuffs and put them on Odighizuwa before police arrived, Ross said.
“He kept saying, ‘I didn’t have anyplace else to go’” Ross said.
Zeke Jackson, 40, of Fort Worth, Texas, a second-year student who said he entered school with Odighizuwa in the fall of 2000, said Odighizuwa flunked out after that semester. He said Odighizuwa didn’t tell his wife, and went to campus every day, often hanging out in the library.
He was allowed to re-enroll last fall, but was dismissed again.
“He was isolated and abrasive,” Jackson said.
Justin Marlowe, a first-year law student from Richwood, W.Va., also said Odighizuwa had flunked out a year ago and “the dean bent over backward to get him enrolled again.”
Briggs, the Grundy doctor, said he had treated Odighizuwa for depression in the past year. In an interview with CNN, Briggs said that, although Odighizuwa had not indicated that he planned violence, “he was a time bomb waiting to go off.”
Odighizuwa’s next-door neighbor, Shirley Trent Stanley, said Odighizuwa had four children, ages 3 to 9. The family moved into the yellow frame house in Grundy in July 2000, Stanley said.
Odighizuwa’s wife, whom Stanley called Abby, 34, works at a local hospital.
The couple had been separated since last summer, but had attempted a reconciliation of late, Stanley said.
Stanley said Peter Odighizuwa had been in the United States about 20 years. He had previously lived in Washington state, and came to Grundy from Dayton, Ohio, she said.
The law school graduated its first class of 34—including two Kentuckians—in May 2000.
The private school has an enrollment of about 234 students. There are about 15 faculty members, including alumni of law schools at the University of California at Berkeley and Columbia, Harvard and Howard universities.
Sutin, a 1984 graduate of Harvard Law, was also an associate professor at the school who taught constitutional law. He left the U. S. Justice Department to found the school after working for the Democratic National Committee and Bill Clinton’s campaign in 1992, according to the Web site of Jurist, the Legal Education Network.
Sutin was instrumental in establishing the school to provide better legal services for Appalachian communities.
The school was closed until Tuesday as the town and students struggled to cope with the tragedy. A memorial service is scheduled for noon today.
Sallie Lawson, 35, of Johnson City, Tenn., who was introduced to Odighizuwa yesterday morning by Jackson, her friend, said Odighizuwa acted peculiar and distracted.
“I shook the guy’s hand. I never imagined anything like this was going to happen,” Lawson said.
*
Staff writer Lance Williams, The Associated Press and the New York Times News Service contributed to this report.
GRAPHIC: STEVE HELBER, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Virginia State Police investigators conducted an interview yesterday in an office at the Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, Va. A Nigerian native who had flunked out of the school is being held.
JOSH MELTZER, ASSOCIATED PRESS
A police officer took video images yesterday of the Appalachian School of Law. A Paducah woman who graduated from Berea College was wounded in shootings that killed three people, including the school’s dean and a professor.
STEVE HELBER, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Police and emergency workers removed the body of a victim at the law school, 13 miles from Pike County.
L. Anthony Sutin, the dean, was killed.
Peter Odighizuwa is facing murder charges.
Liverpool Echo
A STUDENT killed three people and injured three others during a shooting rampage. The gunman, who has not been named, shot dead his dean, a lecturer and another student at the tiny college campus at the Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, Virginia.
Jeffrey Gettleman, Stephanie Simon, Times Staff Writers
Los Angeles Times
A student apparently irate over failing grades burst into the dean’s office with a semiautomatic pistol and killed the dean, a professor and then another student Wednesday at a small private law school amid the coal fields of Appalachia, authorities said.
Other students tackled the gunman minutes after he stalked through the tiny campus of the Appalachian School of Law where he wounded three others during the shooting spree.
State police said they were holding Peter Odighizuwa, a 43-year-old Nigerian immigrant, as the suspected gunman. He had been dismissed from the law school earlier Wednesday; other students said it was the second time that he had failed first-year classes.
“Pray for me,” Odighizuwa said to a professor right before he started shooting, according to police.
They described Odighizuwa as a loner, a Nigerian immigrant who spoke with such a strong accent that it was difficult for them to understand him.
Odighizuwa allegedly shot dean L. Anthony Sutin and professor Thomas Blackwell in their offices, then opened fire, emptying two magazines of .380 bullets in a student lounge, where his classmates were gathered over lunch.
The third fatality was identified as Angela Dales, 33, a former recruiter for the law school who had enrolled as a student last semester.
“The dean and the professor were executed . . . at point-blank range,” said Dr. Jack Briggs, the county medical examiner. “The dean had a white shirt on, and you can see the two bullet holes in his back. You could see the powder burns.”
Two of the wounded students were shot in the back, apparently as they attempted to flee the lounge, Briggs said. “It looked like a war zone,” he said. All the wounded were airlifted to hospitals in Tennessee.
Students who responded to the sound of the gunshots described a nightmarish scene in the lounge–and what seemed an interminable wait before police and paramedics arrived. Using folding coffee tables as makeshift stretchers, several students bundled the wounded into cars and drove them to the local hospital. Two other students, both former police officers, took control of the room and tried to maintain the integrity of the crime scene.
“There was a huge puddle of blood [around one victim] and a trail of blood across the floor,” said first-year student Eric Creed, who helped organize the stretcher brigade. “We were just shocked. Everyone is so shocked.”
Odighizuwa was described as a foul-tempered student who would talk back in class and kick cars when he was angry.
“Peter would snap at you for no reason–even when you tried to reach out to him,” said second-year law student Zeke Jackson.
He seemed to have struggled from the moment he arrived, an immigrant with four young children and a wife and a serious grudge.
“He always thought he was getting picked on,” said Kenneth Brown, a first-year student. “I had been told to stay away from him.”
Grundy, population just over 1,000 and sandwiched between the rolling hills of Appalachia, was in disbelief Wednesday as news crews rolled in one after the other and Virginia state troopers cordoned off the two-story brick law school with yellow police tape.
“Such a close-knit community,” said Gov. Mark Warner, a former member of the law school’s board, “will feel such a tragedy especially deeply.”
Grundy is indeed close-knit; rather than abandoning the town in the face of repeat flooding, the residents have banded together, with state and federal help, on a proposal to move Grundy to higher ground. The historic downtown is expected to relocate, and nearly the whole population will likely follow.
Coal mining long had been king here in far southwestern Virginia. But as the industry has slumped in recent years, civic leaders have been searching for new ways to stimulate development.
Amid all the town’s problems, the Appalachian School of Law became a source of immense pride–and promise.
Established five years ago in a renovated junior high, the school set forth a mission of training attorneys to serve rural Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky. Its founders hoped that the school would bring prestige to a region long stereotyped as hillbilly.
Although its students–many of them middle-aged and launching a second career–come from all over the country, locals have come to view the school as an integral part of the community and hope that its presence will spur more and more area residents to strive for higher education.
Last year the school, which has about 250 students, graduated its first class of 34.
“It was a very big deal to get the school in the first place, and then to get it accredited,” said Ed Talbott, director of the local library.
One fervent believer in that mission was the 42-year-old Sutin, a 1984 Harvard Law School graduate who came to Appalachia after serving as an assistant attorney general during the Clinton administration.
Gettleman reported from Grundy and Simon from St. Louis. Times staff writer Massie Ritsch in Los Angeles and researchers Edith Stanley in Atlanta and John Beckham in Chicago contributed to this report.
Andy Lines
The Mirror
AN angry law student “executed” his college dean and two other people yesterday after failing his exams.
The student went on the rampage with a gun killing Anthony Sutin, another professor and a female student. Three other students were “critically ill” last night after being shot in the back as they fled the Nigerian gunman.
Other students overpowered the man and held him until police arrived.
Witness Chase Goodman said: “There was blood all over the place. I saw a girl hit in the neck.”
Dr Jack Briggs, who treated victims at Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, Virginia, said Mr Sutin and the professor were “executed at point blank range” before the gunman started firing at random.
He said the gunman, who was a foreign exchange student, had failed his exams last year but had been given a second chance.
Dr Briggs said: “I believe the dean was just about to tell him he was no longer able to come back. It appears to be revenge.”
MX (Melbourne, Australia)
COLLEGE SHOOTING
A suspended student shot and killed three people at a law college in Virginia today, including the school’s dean, and wounded three others.
Peter Odighizuma, 43, suspended from the Appalachian School of Law early today, was being held in jail in the town of Grundy in connection with the shooting.
“He was suspended from school effective today for some unknown reason and came back,” state police Lieutenant Jason Miles said.
“He used a .380 semiautomatic handgun.”
Miles said the three people killed were faculty members at the school, but he did not release any names, pending notification of relatives.
The three wounded all women were flown to hospital in a critical condition.
“If they’re airlifted, it’s severe,” Miles said.
The shootings at Appalachian School of Law
Today (7:00 AM ET) - NBC
KATIE COURIC, co-host:
On CLOSE UP this morning, the law school shooting. As we’ve been reporting, on Wednesday, a student opened fire at Virginia’s Appalachian School of Law, killing the dean, a professor and another student. Three others were wounded in the attack. In the crucial moments after the rampage, a few students moved quickly to try to apprehend the suspect and stop the shooting.
One of those students is Tracy Bridges.
Mr. Bridges, good morning.
Mr. TRACY BRIDGES (Helped to apprehend law school student): Good morning.
COURIC: I know the–the shooting broke out around 1:30, I guess, in the afternoon. Can you describe what you witnessed?
Mr. BRIDGES: Yes, ma’am. We were–we had a class at 1:30. We had arrived a little earlier, around 1:00. Shortly after we got to the classroom, we heard three shots fired. It kind of was muffled and we thought it was a gunshot. Just a few seconds later we heard three more shots and a scream. Myself and another student, Ted Besen, left the classroom. We ran into a professor and he said that Peter had a gun and that he was shooting. I ran back to the classroom and told the other classmates to get out, that we had a shooter in the building.
COURIC: When he…
Mr. BRIDGES: At that time…
COURIC: When he said, Tracy that ‘Peter has a gun,’ you knew exactly who he was talking about, didn’t you?
Mr. BRIDGES: Yes, ma’am.
COURIC: Why?
Mr. BRIDGES: It is a relatively small school. That’s really the only Peter that I know. I know that he was a repeat student. I mean, that was the only Peter that I knew at the time.
COURIC: Did you know that this Peter was having trouble in school, or that there was–was any reason for him to be upset or agitated or angry?
Mr. BRIDGES: I knew he had some academic problems, that he was a restart student, which means that he didn’t do so well the first semester he was here. And the school allowed him to come back and try again. That’s all, you know, that’s all I knew at the time.
COURIC: What happened next, Tracy, after you heard a professor say that Peter had a gun?
Mr. BRIDGES: I went back to the classroom and told the students to get out, that there was a shooter in the building. We herded them out the–the back stairwell. At that time, me and Ted Besen went down the back stairwell, and my vehicle was parked in a parking spot between the shooter and the back stairwell. We seen the shooter, started to approach him, stopped at my vehicle, and got out my handgun, and started to approach Peter. At that time, Peter throwed up his hands and throwed his weapon down. Ted was first person to have contact with Peter, and Peter hit him one time in the face. So there was a little bit of a struggle there. After that, Ted pushed him back, me, Ted and another student, Todd Ross, took Peter to the ground and subdued him until we had some handcuffs to put him in.
COURIC: I should mention, Tracy, that you are a police officer, a trained police officer. You were one in–in North Carolina. And another student, I understand, who was able to help, Michael Gross, he handed you a pair of handcuffs so you could handcuff the suspect. Must have been incredibly fortuitous that you all had police training and a police background that you were able to–to act in such a–a quick and appropriate way.
Mr. BRIDGES: Yes, ma’am. It all kind of happened real fast. We, you know, just kind of done what we could at the time.
COURIC: Tell me a little bit about the dean who was killed as a result of this, Anthony Sutin. I understand that you and he had a very close relationship.
Mr. BRIDGES: Yes, ma’am. Me and Dean Sutin, I got to know him when I was a first year student here before he was dean. He was a professor. I had him in class and he was a very close friend and mentor. Usually during the day if I found a few minutes extra time, I went by and had discussions with Dean Sutin. He’s written me several job recommendations. Just an extraordinary guy.
COURIC: Along with Dean Sutin, Thomas Blackwell, a professor, and Angela Dales, a student, were both also killed. What is the reaction? I mean, this is such a shocking event, particularly for your community, which is a very quiet community normally?
Mr. BRIDGES: Yes, ma’am. It’s just real shocking right now. Our hearts go out to, of course, Professor Sutin, or Dean Sutin’s family, and Professor Blackwell’s family, and Angela’s family as well. Professor Blackwell, and also Dean Sutin, had children, and everybody is just real worried about that. And it just seems kind of surreal right now.
COURIC: Well, Tracy Bridges, we thank you so much for talking with us this morning. And thank you for your quick–quick and steady action. I’m sure you were a big help given the–the chaos of the situation. Tracy, thank you so much.
Mr. BRIDGES: Yes, ma’am.
COURIC: Now, here’s Matt.
MATT LAUER, co-host:
Katie, thank you.
Disgruntled student goes on shooting rampage, killing three and wounding three others
Today (7:00 AM ET) - NBC
ANN CURRY, anchor:
A small law school in Virginia, as you just heard, is reeling this morning after a shooting rampage on campus Wednesday. Three people were killed, including the dean of the law school. A suspect is in custody. NBC’s Virginia Cha is in Grundy, Virginia, with more on this story.
Virginia, good morning.
VIRGINIA CHA reporting:
Good morning, Ann.
The suspect faces arraignment this morning on three counts of capital murder. He’s accused of shooting to death two members of the faculty and one student. Officials say he had a history of mental instability, and that just before the shooting rampage, asked a professor, who he did not harm, to pray for him.
Students at this tiny law school shocked by the tragic killings. A struggling law student, 43-year-old Peter Odighizuwa, apparently angry about being suspended because of his grades. Police say he took out his frustration with deadly violence first shooting two faculty members, including L. Anthony Sutin, the dean of the Appalachian School of Law.
Mr. MICHAEL SLATER (Virginia State Police): The suspect then went downstairs to the first floor and shot the other students as he exited the building. As he walked out of the building, three students grabbed him and subdued him and forced him to the ground.
CHA: The school of just 170 students described as a tight knit community, now grieving over the death of their friends.
Three students seriously injured in that shooting are listed in fair condition this morning. The school is holding a memorial service later today, open to the public. Ann:
CURRY: NBC’s Virginia Cha. Thank you, Virginia.
Today (7:00 AM ET) - NBC
MATT LAUER, co-host:
Good morning. Death on campus. A 43-year-old law student is in custody in Virginia after going on a shooting rampage killing three and wounding three others before he was captured. The stunned community at Appalachian Law School holds a memorial service for the victims today, Thursday, January 17th, 2002.
Announcer: From NBC News, this is TODAY, with Katie Couric and Matt Lauer, live from Studio 1A in Rockefeller Plaza.
LAUER: And welcome to TODAY on a Thursday morning. I’m Matt Lauer.
KATIE COURIC, co-host:
And I’m Katie Couric. Killed in this rampage, the dean of the school, a professor and a student. It’s just a terrible story.
LAUER: It really is. Apparently the gunman failed to make the grade last year and was allowed to come back this year, but he was suspended again for low marks and was on campus to discuss that with school officials. We’ll have details on the story from the newsdesk in a moment, and then we’ll talk to one of the students who helped to subdue the shooter.
Then we’ll talk about airport security. It is supposed to get much tighter tomorrow. That’s when airlines will be required to screen all baggage, the deadline set by the Airline Security Law passed after the September 11th attacks. But will the system be ready? And what about delays? We’ll talk to the transportation secretary, Norman Mineta, about that.
COURIC: And if you’ve been frustrated with long waits at the doctor’s office, how would you like your doctor on call for you all the time? Well, if you can cough up the money, you can take advantage of the newest trend, luxury medical care. We’re going to be talking with two doctors setting up this new boutique form of medicine. Plus, the curse of the cover, why one magazine is breaking with tradition and did not put a famous face on its cover. The question is, will the jinx be broken?
LAUER: Remember the miniseries “Roots?”
COURIC: Of course, I do. I sure do.
LAUER: A full week that stopped this nation 25 years ago, hard to believe. We’re going to look back at the groundbreaking television drama, and we’ll talk to one of the stars about its legacy.
COURIC: We’ll also show you the latest in workout clothes. They’re not just for the gym anymore. And I’ve got two scary words for you ladies, flash dance.
LAUER: Oh! All right, before we get to that, let’s head over to the newsdesk. Ann Curry has the overnight developments.
ANN CURRY, anchor:
All right, thanks a lot, Matt and Katie. Good morning.
Good morning, everybody.
3 Slain at Law School; Student Is Held
Francis X. Clines
The New York Times
A distressed student facing suspension stormed through the campus of the Appalachian School of Law today with a handgun, killing the dean, a professor and a student and wounding three others before he was tackled by fellow students, the state police reported.
“Come get me, come get me,” the gunman was heard saying as terrorized witnesses ran for their lives here in this coal mining town in a remote corner of mountainous Appalachia.
“He was a time bomb waiting to go off,” Dr. Jack Briggs, a county coroner, told news reporters about the alleged assailant, Peter Odighizuwa, 42, a student from Nigeria. The authorities said the school had told Mr. Odighizuwa on Tuesday that he would be suspended because of failing grades.
State officials said that Mr. Odighizuwa, who was charged with three counts of capital murder, had a history of mental instability and that school authorities had sought to help him.
In a running assault, the gunman confronted and fatally shot the law school dean, L. Anthony Sutin, 42, who was a senior Justice Department official in the Clinton administration. Mr. Sutin was shot in his second-floor office, as was Thomas F. Blackwell, 41, a member of the faculty.
The third person killed, Angela Denise Dales, 33, of Vansant, Va., was described as a former law school employee who was widely admired for achieving her dream of finally enrolling as a student. She was shot in the school lounge with a .380 semiautomatic pistol.
The gunfire stunned the campus and surrounding town of 1,100 residents as it delivered death to a school envisioned in the 1990’s as a pastoral outpost to answer the chronic problems of educational need in one of the more distant and impoverished parts of Appalachia. It opened five years ago in a renovated junior high school and now has 170 students and 15 faculty members.
Mr. Sutin was praised by faculty and students as a dedicated pioneer at the school, a cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School who had specialized in legislative affairs for former Attorney General Janet Reno before turning to the school as a fresh adventure. Professor Blackwell, a graduate of Duke University School of Law, was recruited to the faculty from his law practice in Dallas.
The three wounded students, hospitalized in fair to critical condition tonight, were identified as Rebecca Claire Brown, 38, of Roanoke, Va., who was shot in the abdomen; Martha Madeline Short, 37, of Grundy, who was shot in the throat; and Stacey Bean, 22, of Berea, Ky., who was shot in the chest.
“There were pools of blood all over,” Chase Goodman, a 27-year-old student, said in describing a scene punctuated with screams and gunfire.
“When I got there there were bodies laying everywhere,” said Dr. Briggs, who arrived at the first emergency alarm. Two victims suffered point-blank wounds “execution style,” one doctor at the scene said.
Mr. Odighizuwa was subdued by three law students who were experienced police officers, the authorities said.
“We’re trained to run into the situation instead away from it,” said one of the three, Mikael Gross, 34, of Charlotte, N.C., who ran to his car for his bulletproof vest and service pistol before tackling the suspect.
Mr. Gross said that when he returned to the building he saw the gunman strike Ted Besen, another former officer, in the head. Mr. Gross said that he and another former officer, Tracy Bridges, then tackled the man.
Students described Mr. Odighizuwa as a troubled, sometimes abrasive classmate who became particularly upset after receiving failing grades a year ago.
“The dean bent over backward to get him enrolled again,” Justin Marlowe, a first-year student from Richwood, W.Va., told The Associated Press. Students said that Mr. Odighizuwa had been separated from his wife and that they shared custody of their four children, an additional factor of stress after he failed his first-year classes.
“I knew he would destroy some property or take something from the school, but not kill people like he did,” said Zeke Jackson, 40, a student from Fort Worth , who is head of the Black Student Association.
Attorney General John Ashcroft issued a statement of condolence to Dean Sutin’s wife and their two children. “The entire Justice Department is mourning the loss of a dedicated public servant,” Mr. Ashcroft said.
Appalled witnesses emphasized the remoteness of the school as a presumed safety factor that failed here in this rustic outpost.
“You know, the World Trade Center is in New York, but Appalachian Law School is right here in a very small community in southwest Virginia,” Dr. Briggs told CNN. “This is about as close as you can get to a war zone.” The doctor said the shootings were “just a matter of him releasing his anger on the world, I guess.”
Gov. Mark R. Warner of Virginia, who was on the school’s board until he took office last week, commended the students who apprehended the suspect.
“My heart goes out to the school and the community,” Mr. Warner said. “I know that such a close-knit community will feel such a tragedy especially deeply.”
http://www.nytimes.com
CORRECTION-DATE: January 21, 2002, Monday
CORRECTION:
An article on Thursday about a rampage shooting at the Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, Va., in which a student was charged, misstated the number of people shot to death in 1991 by a student at the University of Iowa. It was five, not four, besides himself.
Hugo Kugiya
Newsday (New York)
A student who had been dismissed from law school opened fire at the campus yesterday, shooting to death three people, including the dean of the small Appalachian School of Law in rural Grundy, Va., authorities said. Police said the gunman, identified as Peter Odighizuwa, 42, also wounded three female students at the school before being overpowered by classmates and taken into custody by police. The dead included Dean L. Anthony Sutin and Prof. Thomas Blackwell, said Ellen Qualls, a spokeswoman for Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, who served on the board of the law school until he took office last week. Police identified the third victim as a student, Angela Dales, 33. The three wounded students were hospitalized yesterday in fair condition. Odighizuwa, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Nigeria, had been dismissed for academic reasons effective yesterday, authorities said. Qualls said Odighizuwa had a history of mental instability, of which school officials were aware. Justin Marlowe, a first-year law student from Richwood, W.Va., attended all the same classes as Odighizuwa. “He was a real quiet guy who kept to himself,” Marlowe said. “He didn’t talk to anybody, but he gave no indication that he was capable of something like this.” Marlowe said Odighizuwa had flunked out a year ago and “the dean bent over backward to get him enrolled again.” Other students said he had failed first-year classes at least twice. When he arrived on campus yesterday, Odighizuwa first stopped in the office of Prof. Dale Rubin to talk about his grades and as he left he asked Rubin to pray for him, police said. He then walked to Sutin’s and Blackwell’s offices and shot each one with a .380-caliber pistol, said state police spokesman Mike Stater. Blackwell had taught contract law to Odighizuwa. Odighizuwa then went downstairs into a common area and opened fire on a crowd of students, killing Dales and seriously wounding three others, according to witnesses. Todd Ross, 30, of Johnson City, Tenn., was among the students who were outside when Odighizuwa left the building. Ross said the suspect was holding his hands in the air and dropped the gun at his prompting. Odighizuwa was promptly tackled and “struggled after we got him on the ground, but then just laid there,” Ross said. He said the suspect kept shouting, “I have nowhere to go. I have nowhere to go.” Dr. Jack Briggs, the county medical examiner, said Odighizuwa was tackled by four male students as he left the building. The suspect was being held at the Buchanan County Jail on three counts of capital murder and three weapons counts, authorities said. The school will be closed for the rest of the week. “This affects everyone,” said a woman who works in the town’s library one-quarter mile away. “Most of the people in the town know at least some of the people at the law school. It’s heartbreaking.” The private law school opened in 1997 in a former junior high school building and graduated its first class of 34 in 2000. About 170 students are enrolled at the school, which has yet to be accredited by the American Bar Association. Tuition is $16,000 a year. Sutin, a 1984 graduate of Harvard Law School, also taught two courses in constitutional law. He was a partner in the Washington, D.C., law firm of Hogan & Hartson before joining the U.S. Department of Justice. Blackwell, an associate professor, previously worked in private practice in Dallas. The school was opened with the hope that it would ease a shortage of lawyers and attract economic activity in the rural and depressed area. This story was supplemented with wire service reports.
Newsletter
FOUR students overpowered a gunman who went on a shooting spree at their US college last night, killing three people in what a doctor described as ”executions”.
The four students tackled the man while he was still armed with a .380 semi-automatic pistol and managed to hold him until police arrived at the Appalachian School of Law, in Grundy, Virginia.
He had already shot and killed three people, including the dean of the college and one of the professors, and left three other students critically injured.
The doctor who was the first medical worker on the scene said the dean of the school, Anthony Sutin, had been ”executed” with shots to the head, and another member of staff had been shot in the back as he lay on the ground.
“It appears as though some of these shots were after one professor was down and they were shot at point-blank range,” said Dr Jack Briggs.
“Two shots were shot into the dean in the head. It appears he was executed. It looked like a war zone. There were bodies everywhere.”
The two staff members were apparently shot in front of their secretaries before the gunman went on a spree in which he shot randomly at students.
The doctor said the gunman was a ”foreign exchange student” and had been on the point of being told to leave the law school which has around 170 students and was founded in 1997.
“Four students tackled him and took him down,” said the doctor. “They got him down and kept him for his police. I do not believe he had given up his weapon.
“This student was a foreign student who had had difficulty. He flunked out of school last year.
“He was given another chance, but this was the end of the first semester. I believe that the dean was about to tell him that he would have to leave.
“He took his anger out on the people who I think he thought were responsible for him leaving the school.”
The three students were described as being ”critical” by Dr Briggs, and had been transferred by helicopter to hospitals near the small town, which is in a rural area of the Appalachian Mountains.
The doctor added: ”The person who did the shooting was a patient of mine. I saw him about six months ago. He was complaining of stress.
“He was a timebomb waiting to go off. There are lots of things that will come out in the trial that I think are probably pretty pertinent to his personality.”
The college was set up in 1997 to help the run-down coal-mining area’s economy and Mr Sutin, a graduate of Harvard Law School, was made principal with a staff of just 15.
Dr Briggs paid tribute to the dean and said: ”He was a real good guy.”
GUNMAN KILLS THREE IN US COLLEGE
ONASA News Agency
SARAJEVO, Jan 17 (ONASA) - A struggling student shot three people dead at a law school in the American state of Virginia, before being wrestled to the ground by fellow students.
The victims included the dean, a faculty member and a student of the Appalachian School of Law in the town of Grundy. Three other people were critically wounded, BBC reported.
The suspected gunman was identified as Nigerian Peter Odighizuwa, 42, who had been suspended from college earlier in the day. Governor Mark Warner, who was on the school’s board until he took office last week said: “My heart goes out to the school and the community. I know that such a close-knit community will feel such a tragedy especially deeply.” The school’s dean, Anthony Sutin, had worked in the Clinton administration before leaving to found the college. He and Professor Thomas Blackwell were gunned down in their offices, school officials said. Dr Jack Briggs, the first to arrive on the scene, said the two men had been shot twice in the head in an “execution-style” killing. The gunman then went into a common area and opened fire, before being tackled by four students. “They just wanted the guy,” Dr Briggs said. “They weren’t worried about their own personal safety.
News of Dean Sutin’s death brought statements of condolence from US Attorney-General John Ashcroft and his predecessor, Janet Reno. “In today’s shooting, I lost not only a former colleague but a friend,” Miss Reno said. “Tony was an incredibly kind, exceptionally bright and intensely dedicated public servant.” The private law school opened five years ago with the idea of easing the shortage of lawyers in the coalfields of southwest Virginia. It has 170 students.
EXPELLED LAW STUDENT KILLS 3 ON CAMPUS;
Stephanie Simon
Orlando Sentinel (Florida)
A student apparently irate over his failing grades killed three people and seriously wounded three others Wednesday at a small private law school in Grundy, Va., amid the coal fields of Appalachia, authorities said.
Other students tackled the gunman to the ground minutes after he stalked through the tiny campus of the Appalachian School of Law with a semiautomatic handgun—killing a student, a popular professor and the school’s dean.
State police said they were holding Peter Odighizuma, 43, in custody as the suspected gunman. He had been dismissed from the law school earlier Wednesday; other students said it was at least the second time that he had failed first-year classes. They described Odighizuma as a loner, a Nigerian immigrant who spoke with such a strong accent that it was difficult for them to understand him.
Odighizuma allegedly shot Professor Thomas Blackwell and Dean L. Anthony Sutin in their offices, then opened fire in the hallway and in a student lounge, where his classmates were gathered over lunch.
Sutin previously worked at the U.S. Justice Department for then-Attorney General Janet Reno, and as director of legislative affairs at the department before moving to the law school.
“The dean and the professor were executed at point-blank range,” said Dr. Jack Briggs, the county medical examiner. “The dean had a white shirt on, and you can see the two bullet holes in his back. You could see the powder burns.”
Two of the students were shot in the back, apparently as they attempted to flee the lounge, Briggs said. Police identified the slain student as Angela Dales.
Students who responded to the sound of the gunshots described a surreal scene of carnage in the lounge—and what seemed an interminable wait before police and paramedics arrived. Using folding coffee tables as makeshift stretchers, several students bundled the wounded into cars and drove them to the local hospital. Two other students, both former police officers, took control of the room and tried to maintain the crime scene.
Established five years ago, the school set forth a mission of training attorneys to serve rural Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky.
COMMUNITY IN MOURNING AFTER COLLEGE MASSACRE
Hugh Dougherty
Press Association
A close-knit American community was today in mourning after a college student killed his dean, a lecturer and another student, and injured three women students during a shooting rampage.
The gunman, who has not been named, was overpowered by four other students while still wielding his semi-automatic handgun at the tiny college campus at the Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, Virginia.
The remote town was in shock after the shootings, with the dean of the college, a professor and a student all dead, while the three injured women were recovering in hospital after surgery.
Dr Jack Briggs, the first doctor on the scene, said the dean, Anthony Sutin, had apparently been shot twice in the head at point-blank range, while the professor, who has not been named, was shot while he lay wounded on the ground.
“It appears as though some of these shots were fired after one professor was down and they were shot at point blank range,” the doctor told Fox News.
“Two shots were shot into the dean in the head. It appears he was executed.
“It looked like a war zone. There were bodies everywhere.”
The two staff members were apparently shot in front of their secretaries before the gunman went on the rampage in which he shot randomly at students.
The doctor said the gunman was a “foreign exchange student” and had been on the point of being told to leave the law school which has around 170 students and was founded in 1997.
“Four students tackled him and took him down,” said the doctor.
“They got him down and kept him for his police. I do not believe he had given up his weapon.
“This student was a foreign student who had had difficulty. He flunked out of school last year.
“He was given another chance, but this was the end of the first semester. I believe that the dean was about to tell him that he would have to leave.
“He took his anger out on the people who I think he thought were responsible for him leaving the school.”
The doctor added: “The person who did the shooting was a patient of mine. I saw him about six months ago. He was complaining of stress.”
“He was a timebomb waiting to go off. There are lots of things that will come out in the trial that I think are probably pretty pertinent to his personality.”
Harvard-educated Mr Sutin had been the top legal adviser to former US vice president Al Gore when he made his failed bid for the presidency in 1994 and had also been an assistant attorney-general, one of America’s top prosecutors.
Disgruntled law student kills 3 at school
The Record (Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario)
- A student who had been dismissed from law school went on a campus shooting rampage yesterday, killing the dean, a professor and a student before he was tackled by students, authorities said.
The attack also wounded three female students at the Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, Va. They were in hospital in fair condition.
“When I got there, there were bodies laying everywhere,” said Dr. Jack Briggs, one of the first to arrive after the shooting in the tiny mountain community in western Virginia.
Dean L. Anthony Sutin and Prof. Thomas Blackwell were gunned down in their offices, school officials said. Police said the third person slain was student Angela Dales, 33.
Authorities said the 42-year-old suspect, Peter Odighizuwa, had arrived at school to meet with the dean about his academic dismissal, which went into effect yesterday.
Briggs said Odighizuwa, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Nigeria, failed last year but had been allowed to return to the school.
Odighizuwa first stopped in the office of Prof. Dale Rubin to talk about his grades and as he left he was reported to have asked Rubin to pray for him, police said. Rubin, reached by telephone, declined comment.
He then walked to Sutin’s and Blackwell’s offices and shot them with a pistol, State Police spokesman Mike Stater said. Blackwell had taught contract law to Odighizuwa.
Witnesses said Odighizuwa then went downstairs into a common area and opened fire on a crowd of students, killing Dales and seriously wounding three others.
Todd Ross, 30, of Johnson City, Tenn., was among the students who were outside when Odighizuwa left the building. Ross said the suspect was holding his hands in the air and dropped the gun at his prompting.
Odighizuwa was promptly tackled and “struggled after we got him on the ground but then just laid there,” Ross said.
He said the suspect kept shouting: “‘I have nowhere to go. I have nowhere to go.”’
The suspect was being held at the Buchanan County Jail on three counts of capital murder and three weapons counts, authorities said.
Ellen Qualls, a spokeswoman for Gov. Mark Warner, said Odighizuwa had a history of mental instability school officials knew about.
First-year student Justin Marlowe from Richwood, W.Va., said the suspect had been in all of his classes.
“He was a real quiet guy who kept to himself. He didn’t talk to anybody but he gave no indication that he was capable of something like this,” Marlowe said.
The private law school, with an enrolment of about 170 students, was closed for the rest of the week.
School president Lucius Ellsworth was meeting with government officials in Richmond and flew back when he learned of the shootings.
“Each of us is suffering but as a family, we can find strength to pass through this terrible dark and tragic valley,” he said.
ARMED STUDENT KILLS THREE AT VA. LAW SCHOOL
Roger Alford
The Record (Bergen County, NJ)
A struggling Nigerian law school student went on a campus shooting spree Wednesday, killing the dean, a professor, and a student before he was tackled by students, authorities said.
The attack also wounded three students at the Appalachian School of Law. Two were in surgery Wednesday evening and the third was listed in fair condition.
“When I got there, there were bodies laying everywhere,” said Dr. Jack Briggs, who was one of the first to arrive after the shooting in this small mountain community in western Virginia.
Dean L. Anthony Sutin and Professor Thomas Blackwell were gunned down in their offices, according to school officials. Police said the third person slain was student Angela Dales, 33.
The 42-year-old suspect, Peter Odighizuwa, had arrived at school to meet with the dean about his academic suspension, which went into effect Wednesday, state police spokesman Mike Stater said.
Odighizuwa first stopped in the office of Professor Dale Rubin to talk about his grades and as he left reportedly asked Rubin to pray for him, police said.
He then walked to Sutin’s and Blackwell’s offices and shot them with a .380-caliber pistol, Stater said. Witnesses said Odighizuwa then went downstairs into a common area and opened fire on a crowd of students, killing Dales and seriously wounding three others.
Todd Ross, 30, of Johnson City, Tenn., was among the students who were outside when Odighizuwa left the building. Ross said the suspect was holding his hands in the air and dropped the gun at his prompting.
Odighizuwa was quickly tackled and “struggled after we got him on the ground, but then just laid there,” Ross said. He said the suspect kept shouting, “I have nowhere to go. I have nowhere to go. “ The suspect was being held at the Buchanan County Jail on three counts of capital murder and three weapons counts, authorities said.
Ellen Qualls, a spokeswoman for Gov. Mark Warner, said Odighizuwa had a history of mental instability that school officials knew about.
Rubin, the professor who spoke with the suspect moments before the rampage, declined to comment after the shooting.
First-year student Justin Marlowe from Richwood, W.Va., said the suspect had been in all of his classes.
“He was a real quiet guy who kept to himself. He didn’t talk to anybody, but he gave no indication that he was capable of something like this,” Marlowe said.
He also said Odighizuwa had flunked out a year ago and “the dean bent over backward to get him enrolled again. ” The private law school, with an enrollment of about 170 students, was closed for the rest of the week.
The governor, who had served on the school’s board until he took office last week, said he was shocked by the shooting.
“I commend the students who acted swiftly to apprehend the suspect,” Warner said. “My heart goes out to the school and the community. I know that such a close-knit community will feel such a tragedy especially deeply. ” Sutin, a 1984 graduate of Harvard Law School, also was an associate professor at the school. He left the Justice Department to help found the school after working for the Democratic National Committee and Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign in 1992, according to the Web site of Jurist, the Legal Education Network.
Attorney General John Ashcroft issued a statement expressing his condolences to Sutin’s wife and their two children.
The school opened five years ago in a renovated junior high school in Grundy, a town of about 1,100 just a few miles south of the Kentucky and West Virginia state lines.
School officials hope to ease a shortage of lawyers in the coal fields of southwest Virginia, help change the region’s image, and foster renewal in Appalachia. The American Bar Association rejected the school’s first application for accreditation in 1999, but the school graduated its first class of 34 in 2000.
There are about 15 faculty members, including alumni of law schools at the University of California at Berkeley and Columbia, Harvard, and Howard universities.
“You read about it in other areas, but when it comes home it really hurts,” said state Delegate Jackie Stump of Grundy, fighting back tears as he hung his head and walked away from a news conference in Richmond.
Rex Bowman
Richmond Times Dispatch (Virginia)
A student suspended for poor grades is charged with killing three people and wounding three others yesterday at the Appalachian School of Law before fellow students tackled and subdued him, according to authorities.
L. Anthony Sutin, 42, the dean of the school, and associate professor Thomas Blackwell, 41, were in their offices when they were shot and killed. The third person killed was student Angela Dales, 33, of Vansant, according to state police.
Peter Odighizuwa, 43, a Nigerian student who is a naturalized U.S. citizen, has been charged with three counts of capital murder and three counts of using a firearm in commission of a felony, state police said. He is being held in the Buchanan County Jail.
Odighizuwa was dismissed last week for poor grades and was notified that his financial aid would be suspended effective yesterday, said Chris Clifton, financial aid director in the office of student services.
Odighizuwa came into the financial aid office Tuesday and was threatening and verbally abusive, Clifton said.
“He was very hostile.” Clifton said. “This student had previously threatened the entire office of student services. He had even stolen his file once before.”
Clifton said he was in his office on the first floor yesterday when the shootings occurred at about 1:15 p.m.
“We heard a lot of commotion outside [the office] and heard some gunshots,” he said.
“When we heard all that, I immediately locked the door and I got the people in the office out. We climbed through a window - me, two employees and three students who were in the office. I went back in to see if everybody was OK. By the time I got in, the students had [the gunman] on the ground.”
The wounded students are Rebecca Claire Brown, 38, of Roanoke, who was shot in the abdomen and arm and taken to Holston Valley Hospital in Kingsport, Tenn.; Martha Madeline Short, 37, of Grundy, who was shot in the back and was taken to Holston Valley; and Stacey Beans, 22, of Berea, Ky., who was shot in the chest and was flown to Bristol Regional Hospital.
All three were in fair condition last night, according to hospital officials.
State police spokesman Mike Stater said the suspect entered professor Dale Rubin’s office to discuss his grades and suspension.
“As he left that office, he reportedly asked professor Rubin to pray for him. The suspect then went into the offices of Sutin and Blackwell and opened fire with a Jennings .380 semiautomatic pistol,” Stater said.
“He then went downstairs and opened fire on the students, killing one and injuring the other three. As he walked out of the building, he was subdued by students and forced to the ground until Buchanan County sheriff’s deputies arrived to make the arrest.”
Zeke Jackson, of Fort Worth, Texas, a student at the law school, said of Odighizuwa: “He was a loner, somebody who would snap on you. He had an abrasive attitude.
“I thought he was going to hurt a student. I thought he was going to lash out at a student. He had been explosive when he was told he was wrong. I feel kind of guilty. I really wish I had talked to the dean of students or somebody. I wish I had gone into the dean’s office and said, ‘You need to get rid of this guy.’”
Dr. Jackie Briggs of Grundy, whose son-in-law is a student at the law school, said Odighizuwa’s wife was a nursing aide at Buchanan General Hospital. The nurses there had taken up a collection to “keep the kids from starving,” he said.
Odighizuwa’s wife had left him about three months ago and taken their four children with her, according to Clifton.
Del. Jackie T. Stump, D-Buchanan, disclosed the killings yesterday during a packed hearing on the state budget in the General Assembly Building in Richmond. The money committees observed a moment of silence to remember the victims.
Later, a tearful Stump, standing by the governor, told reporters, “You read about it and hear about it in other areas. When it comes home, it really hurts - good people.”
Gov. Mark R. Warner provided a state plane to Dr. Lucius F. Ellsworth, president of the Appalachian School of Law, to fly him back to Grundy. He had been in Richmond for a gathering of college presidents.
Warner, who had served on the law school’s board for almost two years, described the shootings as “a tragedy. We deplore this senseless act of violence. . . . I send out my personal sympathies to the families of the victims.”
At a news conference at the law school last night, Ellsworth said, “We are deeply saddened by this horrific tragedy. At this time, we find little meaning in these senseless acts. We know we can come together as the law school family in a loving, caring, supportive way.
“Each of us is suffering, but as a family, we can find strength to pass through this terrible dark and tragic valley.”
U.S. Sen. George Allen, a member of the school’s board of trustees, said, “The staff and faculty at Appalachian have always gone far out of their way to provide individual attention to students, so the loss of a student, a faculty member and Dean Sutin have hit the school especially hard.”
Attorney General Jerry Kilgore, said, “It was with great sadness that I learned of the shootings. . . . As natives of Southwest Virginia, my wife, Marty, and I extend our sympathies to the families and friends who lost loved ones in the senseless act.”
The law school opened in 1997 in an old school building in the Buchanan mountain town of 1,100 residents. The school, which has an enrollment of about 170, was opened with the hope of easing the shortage of lawyers in Southwest Virginia.
Laurence Hammack
Roanoke Times & World News (Roanoke, VA)
Minutes after he was told that he had flunked out of law school, a student went on a shooting rampage Wednesday, killing three people and wounding another three at the Appalachian School of Law.
“Pray for me,” Peter Odighizuwa reportedly told a law professor before gunfire rang out on the normally tranquil campus.
Authorities said other students wrestled Odighizuwa to the ground outside the school’s main building following the afternoon shooting, which claimed the lives of the dean, a professor and a first-year student. One of the three wounded students was from Roanoke.
Odighizuwa - described by fellow students as a loner convinced that school officials were out to get him - was being held in the Buchanan County Jail on three counts of capital murder.
Anthony Sutin, 42, who as dean of the school had allowed Odighizuwa to re-enroll after he flunked out once before, was among the victims. Also killed were professor Thomas Blackwell, 41, and Angela Denise Dales, 33, a former staffer at the school who became a student last year.
In the months before the shooting, Odighizuwa had become increasingly distraught about his trouble in school and a marriage that was also failing, students said.
“He just thought everyone was conspiring against him,” student John Harris said.
As students restrained him outside the building, Odighizuwa “kept saying, ‘I tried to get help; I tried to get help,’ ” said Mike Melkersen, a student who came upon the scene minutes after the shooting. “He said: ‘I even went to church; I tried to get help.’ “
Virginia State Police spokesman Mike Stater said that Odighizuwa, who was from Nigeria, went to professor Dale Rubin’s office about 1:15 p.m. to discuss his academic suspension, which became effective Wednesday.
After telling Rubin to pray for him, the suspect then went to the second-floor offices of Sutin and Blackwell. Both men were then shot with a .380-caliber semiautomatic pistol, Stater said, and were pronounced dead at the scene.
Odighizuwa then went downstairs to a lobby, where Dales was shot along with three other students.
Rebecca Clair Brown, 38, of Roanoke, was shot in the abdomen and arm. She was listed in fair condition after surgery at Wellmont Holston Valley Medical Center in Kingsport, Tenn.
Martha Madeline Short, 37, of Grundy, was shot in the throat and was listed in fair condition at the Kingsport hospital.
Stacey Bean, 22, of Berea, Ky., was shot in the chest. She was listed in fair condition after surgery at Wellmont Bristol Regional Medical Center.
Dales, who was shot in the neck, was taken to Buchanan General Hospital in a hearse because it was the only vehicle at the scene that had a gurney, according to Dr. Jack Briggs, who has a family practice less than a mile from the school and was one of the first rescue workers on the scene.
Briggs said Dales died in the emergency room. “Everybody pitched in and tried to save these girls’ lives,” he said.
Minutes after the shooting, Odighizuwa walked out of the school and put his gun on the ground before he was confronted by passers-by. Two eight-shot magazines - both empty - were recovered by police.
After Odighizuwa was overpowered by students, police took him to the Buchanan County Jail.
Gov. Mark Warner, who previously served on the school’s board of trustees, said “We’ve experienced a great tragedy today. We deplore this senseless act of violence.”
The school will be closed for the rest of the week.
Zeke Jackson, president of the school’s black student association, said Odighizuwa was one of about 20 black students at the school.
Race was not the cause of Odighizuwa’s apparent resentment, Jackson said. But for some reason, the 42-year-old - known on campus as “Peter O” - became convinced that both faculty and students were behind his failure in the classroom, Jackson said.
“That was his prime motive: to get back at ASL,” Jackson said. “He used to say that people were messing with him, bothering him, trying to aggravate him.”
Odighizuwa, who often confided in Jackson about his problems, never made any direct threats that he would resort to violence, Jackson said. But whenever they tried to talk in detail about his problems, Odighizuwa became defensive, he said.
Jackson said that when Odighizuwa flunked out of school the first time in 2000, he never told his wife. He would continue to come to the campus, hanging out in the library but mostly keeping to himself.
Odighizuwa was allowed to re-enroll last fall - a decision that Sutin had a hand in, Jackson said.
“Dean Sutin was a wonderful guy,” Jackson said. “Dean Sutin didn’t have to give him another chance, but he did.”
Alex Vanburen, a second-year student who had several classes with Odighizuwa, said he “was a pretty isolated guy. He didn’t have a lot of friends.”
Some time last fall, Odighizuwa stood up in class and began to talk about how he could not afford groceries for his wife and children, Vanburen said. After that, students took up a collection for Odighizuwa and left the cash in his mailbox.
Odighizuwa never acknowledged receiving the money, he said.
Odighizuwa’s wife left him last September, Jackson said. She later returned long enough to claim their four small children, ages 3 to 9, and moved to a nearby community, he said. Since then, Odighizuwa had become increasingly despondent, he said.
“He wasn’t a good accepter of rejection,” Jackson said. “With his wife leaving him and people looking down on him at the law school, he didn’t handle it very well.”
About 9 a.m. Wednesday, Jackson and his friend Sallie Lawson came across Odighizuwa at the school’s library, sitting off to himself and reading The Wall Street Journal. Jackson tried to introduce his friend, but Odighizuwa hardly spoke.
“He was just weird,” Lawson said. “It didn’t feel right when he shook my hand.”
Authorities declined to say if Odighizuwa had made a statement. He is scheduled to be arraigned today in Buchanan County General District Court.
It was not clear Wednesday how he came to enroll at the Appalachian School of Law, which was created in 1997.
Odighizuwa has been a naturalized citizen since 1989, Stater said.
Of the shooting, Stater said, “This incident was absolutely not connected to terrorism in any way, shape or form.”
Yet the events of Sept. 11 were on the minds of many in Grundy, where no one could recall a slaying of Wednesday’s magnitude.
“The World Trade Centers are a long way away,” Briggs said. “Grundy is right here.”
Shirley Trent Stanley, who had lived next door to Odighizuwa and his family until the couple separated and moved last fall, struggled to make sense of the shootings.
“I’d like to be on the map, for Grundy,” she said. “But not for this.”
Stanley said Odighizuwa’s wife, Abieyuma - whom Stanley called “Abby” - and the four boys had many friends. But Peter Odighizuwa was a peculiar neighbor who complained frequently that he was harassed wherever he went, Stanley said.
“He stayed in the house,” said Max Stanley, Shirley Stanley’s son. “You didn’t see him outside.”
Odighizuwa told the Stanleys he had come to the United States 20 years ago, and had worked in Ohio as a substitute teacher, cab driver and pizza delivery driver. He said he had a mathematics degree and had worked as an engineer. The family moved to Grundy in the summer of 2000.
Abieyuma Odighizuwa supported the family by working as an aide at Buchanan General Hospital. She was studying to be a nurse, Shirley Stanley said.
Shirley Stanley’s niece Jennifer Brewer, a retired psychiatric examiner, thought Peter Odighizuwa had been frustrated for a long time. She recalled a conversation with him before the Odighizuwas separated.
According to Brewer, Odighizuwa said: “You people in America are so wealthy. You have so much. You have the Statue of Liberty standing there saying, ‘Bring me your tired and your hungry and poor.’ I am a poor man but no one will help me. No one will help me feed my children.”
Kimberly O’Brien
Roanoke Times & World News (Roanoke, VA)
Anthony Sutin was the dean students aspired to emulate.
Thomas Blackwell was the professor whose door was always open.
Angela Dales was the cheerful former recruiter for the school who was in her first year of law school.
All three died Wednesday when a recently dismissed student with a history of mental instability walked into the Appalachian School of Law in Grundy and went on a shooting spree.
Three others were wounded.
The news of the shooting sent shock waves across Virginia and beyond. In Florida, former Attorney General Janet Reno mourned the loss of Sutin, who was acting assistant attorney general for legislative affairs before he left in 1999 to become dean of the fledging law school.
“In today’s shooting, I lost not only a former colleague, but a friend,” Reno said in an e-mailed statement. “Tony was an incredibly kind, exceptionally bright, and intensely dedicated public servant who was committed to bettering the welfare of all Americans.”
Attorney General John Ashcroft also issued a statement, calling Sutin, 42, a “dedicated public servant.”
At the Department of Justice, Sutin served as deputy director and general counsel for the Office of Community-Oriented Policing Services. Before working for the government, he was a partner in the Washington law firm of Hogan & Hartson, where he worked for nine years specializing in civil litigation. While at the firm, he represented the Democratic National Committee, the Clinton / Gore 1992 campaign and the Tsongas for President campaign.
“Tony was an absolutely brilliant lawyer,” said Sandy Mayo, who worked with Sutin at the law firm. “He was very committed to delivering legal services to the poor and pro bono work.”
Mayo described Sutin, a 1984 Harvard Law School graduate, as “the easiest person in the world to get along with.”
At the Appalachian School of Law, where everyone seemed to know one another, Sutin was just as well-liked, students, alumni and colleagues said. Sutin was also an associate professor of law.
Paul Dull, a Roanoke lawyer who graduated in 2000 and is now president of its alumni association, called Sutin “the greatest guy you ever want to know.” Julia McAfee, a former adjunct professor, said Sutin was instrumental in the school’s receiving accreditation by the American Bar Association last year.
“Dean Sutin was one of those guys you aspired to be,” Dull said. “He thought being a lawyer was a commendable profession.”
Said second-year law student Alex Vanburen: “He came here because he wanted to give back. He wasn’t here because he wanted a job. A guy like that could get a job anywhere in the world.”
Sutin left his home in Northern Virginia for Grundy in 1999 with his wife, Margaret Lawton, and then-3-year-old son, Henry, who was adopted from Russia. Lawton is an adjunct professor at the law school.
In a story in April in The Roanoke Times, Sutin was quoted as saying he had found in Grundy the old-fashioned qualities of life, such as knowing all your neighbors and being able to leave your doors unlocked. Wednesday, Grundy residents said Sutin and his family had truly become part of the community.
“Wonderful people,” said lawyer Tom Scott. “Good citizens of the community.”
Last month, the couple adopted a second child, traveling to China to get their little girl, Clara Lis. Dull said he got a letter from Sutin this past weekend thanking him for a Christmas card and explaining about the new addition to the family.
“The legal community lost a great individual,” Dull said.
Also lost was Blackwell, 41, a professor who taught such classes as law office management and legal process. His wife, Lisa Blackwell, is the acquisitions librarian, according to the school’s Web site. Dull said he thought the Blackwells had several children.
McAfee, now a lawyer in Norton, said Blackwell was always very concerned about his students and worked long hours at the school to be available to them.
“He gave 110 percent,” McAfee said. “His door was always open.”
Vanburen described Blackwell as tough, but laid-back and always smiling. Everyone loved him, he said.
“His class was hard as hell,” Vanburen said. “It was hard, but it was hard because he taught you.”
Angela Dales, 33, the only student killed Wednesday, was a former recruiter for the school in her first year of law school. A single mother with a young daughter, Dales, of Vansant, was always a smiling, happy person, said Dull, who worked part time in the recruiting office while he was in law school.
Kenard Dales described his cousin as an intelligent, “easygoing and a real friendly person” who was easy to talk to.
“She was just really a sweet, nice person,” said Vanburen, who was recruited by Dales. “It was like she was a motivational speaker, except it wasn’t fake. It was real.”
STUDENTS HEROICALLY TACKLE AND RESTRAIN SUSPECT
Paul Dellinger
Roanoke Times & World News (Roanoke, VA)
Todd Ross was walking toward the Appalachian School of Law on Wednesday when he heard the shots.
Then he saw dozens of his fellow students pouring out of the main door. He would learn later that two faculty members and a student inside had been killed and that three other students had been wounded.
Ross, a third-year law student from Johnson City, Tenn., had no idea what was happening, but he retreated into the parking lot.
“That’s when he came out,” Ross said.
Peter Odighizuwa, who had been a student at the school, emerged with both hands in the air, Ross said. In one of them, he held a pistol.
Mike Stater, a Virginia State Police spokesman, later said the eight-shot Jennings .380-caliber semiautomatic was empty, but Ross had no way of knowing that.
“I yelled at him to throw his gun down,” Ross said. Ross stood between two cars in the parking lot in case he had to duck for cover.
Odighizuwa did put the gun onto the ground, Ross said. “I told him to walk towards me.” He said Odighizuwa started to do so.
Then another student, Ted Besen, approached Odighizuwa and the two started to struggle, Ross said. He said Odighizuwa began swinging at Besen. “I ran across the lot and tackled him,” he said.
The struggle probably lasted only a few seconds, Ross said. “With me and Ted, it was pretty rough. He put up a pretty good fight,” Ross said.
A third student, who had been a police officer before entering law school, got a pair of handcuffs from his car, and the three men got them onto Odighizuwa’s wrists, Ross said.
Odighizuwa stopped fighting after that. The other students stayed and watched him until Buchanan County deputies arrived three to five minutes later, Ross said.
It was only after Odighizuwa was taken into custody that Ross and the others learned that three people had been killed and three others wounded.
THREE DIE AS US STUDENT GOES ON SHOOTING RAMPAGE
Foreign Staff
The Scotsman
A STUDENT killed three people and wounded three others in a shooting rampage yesterday at a law school in south-western Virginia.
Among the dead was Anthony Sutin, the dean of the school in the small town of Grundy, and another professor. Both were found “executed” in their offices, staff said. A student was also shot dead before others wrestled the gunman to the ground. Peter Odighizuma, 43, who had been suspended from the Appalachian School of Law earlier in the day, was being held in jail in Grundy in connection with the shooting, according to Virginia police.
He was described as a Nigerian student who failed his courses at the school last year, but was allowed to return.
Lieutenant Jason Miles of the state police said: “He was suspended from school effective today for some unknown reason and came back.”
Jack Briggs, a doctor who has a private practice half a mile from the college, said: “When I got there, there were bodies laying everywhere.” Dr Briggs said he had treated the suspect in the past year. “I think they were getting ready to tell him that he had not made the grade this year,” he added.
After Mr Sutin - the dean and a former official of the US justice department, who worked for the former president Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign - was shot dead, the gunman went downstairs into a common area and opened fire on a crowd of students, killing one and wounding three others. He was tackled by four male students as he left the building.
“They just wanted the guy,” Dr Briggs said. “They weren’t worried about their own personal safety.”
The weapon used appeared to be a single .38 semi-automatic handgun.
The three wounded students, airlifted from the scene, were described as being in a critical condition.
The shooting marked a tragic setback for recent attempts by authorities to improve the region’s image of lawlessness.
The law school in the Appalachian foothills, which has an enrolment of about 170 students, opened in 1997 with the hope of easing a historic shortage of lawyers in the coalfields of south-west Virginia. It has about 15 faculty members, including alumni of law schools at the prestigious University of California at Berkeley and Columbia, Harvard and Howard universities.
Police in New York’s schools kept a wary vigil yesterday a day after two students were wounded in the first shooting inside a city school since 1994. One teenager remained in serious condition after two boys were shot from behind in a hallway in the Martin Luther King Jr High School in Manhattan. No suspect has been named.
American colleges and universities have stayed largely free of the wave of shootings that have swept US schools. Six years ago, an engineering student shot dead three professors who were about to review his thesis at a university in San Diego, California.
The killer was sentenced to three consecutive life terms in prison.
In the past two years, about 10,000 convicted criminals and others barred from buying guns have acquired weapons after faulty background checks.
Critics have long complained that American gun laws allow free and easy access to weapons for people from all walks of life, including children.
The Seattle Times
Felons easily purchased guns, advocacy group says
WASHINGTON—Since mid-1999, 9,976 felons and others legally barred from buying guns—including 343 in Washington—cruised past background checks and purchased firearms, an advocacy group said yesterday.
A report by the Americans for Gun Safety Foundation said most states, including Washington, rely on outdated records and computer technology for background checks, which allows thousands of felons to purchase guns with little trouble. Twenty-two states received failing grades in the report for not maintaining maintain felony-conviction, mental-disability and domestic-violence records; Washington was given a “B-.”
Background checks to determine whether prospective gun buyers have criminal records have been required since 1994 under the Brady Act, staunchly opposed by gun-rights groups. The foundation advocates a “don’t know-don’t sell” policy for those with uncertain backgrounds.
The National Rifle Association agreed the system is sloppy but said the blame should fall on an out-of-control bureaucracy, not lawful gun owners.
Dismissed law student kills dean, professor, wounds 3
GRUNDY, Va.—A student who had been dismissed from law school went on a campus shooting spree yesterday, killing the dean, a professor and a student before he was tackled by students, authorities said.
The attack also wounded three female students at the Appalachian School of Law. They were hospitalized in fair condition.
Authorities said the 42-year-old suspect, Peter Odighizuwa, had arrived at school to meet with the dean about his academic dismissal, which went into effect yesterday.
Police fatally shoot iguana latched onto owner’s finger
HOLLYWOOD, Fla.—Police shot and killed a 4-foot iguana after it latched onto its 14-year-old owner’s finger and bit off the tip.
Christopher Charlie’s mother called police, who tried unsuccessfully to stun the iguana with a Taser gun. Police then shot the iguana in an attempt to retrieve the finger tip, thought to be in the iguana’s stomach.
The fingertip was found in the yard, but doctors said it was too severely damaged to be reattached.
Suspect in 26 bank heists arrested—in front of bank
BRADENTON, Fla.—A man suspected of robbing 26 Florida banks in three years was arrested yesterday after police said they found him sitting in a car parked outside a bank with a gun in the front seat.
Raymond Norman, 45, of Tampa, was being held in the Sarasota County Jail, officials said. Armed-robbery charges were pending.
‘Controlled’ landing goes out of control; military pilot OK
SAVANNAH, Ga.—A military jet malfunctioned yesterday as it was landing, veering off the runway and catching fire. The pilot was slightly injured as he was ejected from the F/A-18 Hornet.
“It was a controlled landing that went out of control,” said Mike Wilson, a Chatham County police spokesman. He said the accident apparently was the result of a landing-gear problem.
SCIENTISTS FIND UNIQUE MICROBES IN NORTHWEST HOT SPRINGS
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Scientists say the organisms are very similar to life as it might exist on Mars and other planets.
The one-celled organisms, known as Archaea, grow by consuming hydrogen that is produced by hot water reacting with bedrock 600 feet below the Beaverhead Mountains. They produce tiny amounts of methane as a byproduct of their metabolism.
Although types of Archaea have been found before, this community is unlike anything else on Earth. Details of the discovery appear in today’s issue of the Nature.
Microbes like these have been the subject of speculation for 30 years. But finding them was another matter. A team of seven government and university scientists found the microbes at the Lidy Hot Springs near the Idaho-Montana line.
Two professors and student
killed in law school shootings
VIRGINIA - A student who had been dismissed from law school student went on a campus shooting spree yesterday, killing the dean, a professor and a student before he was tackled, authorities said.
The attacker also wounded three students at the Appalachian School of Law in Grundy. They were hospitalized in fair condition.
Dean Anthony Sutin and Professor Thomas Blackwell were gunned down in their offices, according to school officials. Police said the third person slain was student Angela Dales, 33.
Peter Odighizuwa, a 42-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen from Nigeria, had gone to the school to meet with the dean about his academic dismissal, which went into effect yesterday, police said.
SUSPENDED LAW STUDENT REPORTEDLY KILLS DEAN, TWO OTHERS ;
Wire Reports
St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri)
A law school student who had just been suspended went on a shooting rampage at the school Wednesday, killing the dean, a professor and a student before he was wrestled to the ground and arrested, school officials and witnesses said.
Three students also were critically injured in the hail of gunfire at the Appalachian School of Law.
“When I got there, there were bodies lying everywhere,” said Dr. Jack Briggs, who has a private practice a half-mile from the school in this tiny mountain community in western Virginia.
Dean L. Anthony Sutin and Professor Thomas Blackwell were gunned down in their offices, school officials said. The third person slain was a student, said Ellen Qualls, a spokeswoman for Gov. Mark Warner.
State police identified the suspect as Peter Odighizuma, 43. Briggs said Odighizuma was a Nigerian who had flunked out last year and been allowed to return.
Odighizuma had been suspended from school earlier Wednesday, Qualls said. She said Odighizuma had a history of mental instability of which school officials were aware.
Sutin, a former Justice Department official who left the Clinton administration to become dean, and the professor were “executed” in their offices, Briggs said. He said the gunman then went downstairs into a common area and opened fire on a crowd of students, killing one and wounding three others.
The gunman was tackled by four male students as he left the building.
The wounded students were hospitalized in critical condition, the governor said. Qualls said the weapon used was a .38-caliber semiautomatic handgun.
The private law school, with an enrollment of about 170 students, was closed for the rest of the week.
Justin Marlowe, a first-year law student from Richwood, W.Va., said the suspect had been in all his classes.
“He was a real quiet guy who kept to himself. He didn’t talk to anybody, but he gave no indication that he was capable of something like this,” Marlowe said.
He also said that Odighizuma had flunked out a year ago and that “the d ean had bent over backward to get him enrolled again.”
Sutin arrived at the Justice Department in 1994, working on community policing issues, and then served as deputy associate attorney general. He was acting assistant attorney general in the office of legislative affairs until November 1998, when he left to join the school staff.
Sutin, who graduated from Harvard Law School in 1984, also had worked for the Democratic National Committee and President Bill Clinton’s campaign in 1992, according to the Web site of Jurist, the Legal Education Network.
Sutin’s death prompted a statement of condolence from U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft.
“The entire Department of Justice is mourning the loss of a dedicated public servant who served the Department of Justice with distinction, integrity and honor,” the statement said.
The school opened five years ago in a renovated junior high school in Grundy, a town of about 1,100 just a few miles south of the Kentucky and West Virginia state lines.
School founders hope to ease a shortage of lawyers in the coalfields of southwest Virginia, help change the region’s image and foster renewal in Appalachia. The American Bar Association rejected the school’s first application for accreditation in 1999.
The school graduated its first class of 34 in 2000.
Brian Flynn
The Sun
A STUDENT angry at his low grades shot dead three people at a law school yesterday.
The man went berserk with a handgun and also wounded three girl students. Peter Odighizuma, 43, was said to have opened fire in the dean’s office before targeting people throughout the small campus. Four students finally overpowered him at Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, Virginia.
College dean Professor Anthony Sutin was shot in the head at point blank range. A lecturer and a student also died.
Student Chase Goodman said: “The guy was upset about his grades. He came back from lunch and started shooting.”
The gunman had been suspended by the college earlier in the day.
Local doctor Jack Briggs said: “It looked like a warzone, bodies everywhere. It appears the dean was executed.
“I used to treat the person who did the shooting. He was complaining of stress and was a timebomb waiting to go off.”
Three shot dead at US law school
Roland Watson
The Times (London)
Washington: A college dean was among three people shot dead by a disgruntled student who rampaged through his Virginia law school firing an automatic handgun (Roland Watson writes).
Three others, all female students, were injured before the gunman, Peter Odighizuma, 43, an exchange student from Nigeria, was overpowered by fellow students at the Appalachian School of Law. Jack Briggs, the first doctor at the scene, said that some of the dead had been “executed”.
Anthony Sutin, the dean of the college in Virginia’s Appalachian mountains, had been an Assistant Attorney-General for legislative affairs in the Clinton Administration and a senior adviser for Al Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign. A lecturer, Thomas Blackwell, was also killed. The third victim, a student, was not named.
Dr Briggs said that he had treated the gunman for stress.
Law school rampage kills 3 in Virginia
Fredrick Kunkle and Craig Timberg
Toronto Star
A failing student shot three people to death and wounded three more yesterday at the Appalachian School of Law, police said.
The ambitious school was created five years ago to bring newcomers and a new way of life to southwest Virginia’s poor and struggling coal-mining region.
The midday attack ended when students overpowered the gunman and held him for Buchanan County sheriff’s deputies, officials said. The law school was founded by community leaders eager to revitalize a region left decimated by the decline of the coal industry. Built in a refurbished junior high school near Grundy’s small downtown, Appalachian was living up to its promise, bringing fresh faces and economic activity.
One of those fresh faces was Anthony Sutin, a senior official in former president Bill Clinton’s justice department, who, along with his wife, Margaret Lawton, began to do exactly what the school’s founders had hoped. They both were on the faculty - Sutin was dean - and were active in the local arts council, their church and in civic life. He was among those killed.
“It’s the ultimate of ironic tragedies,” said Kent Markus, a former Harvard Law School roommate and fellow justice department official. “Here’s a case where the victim was one of the kindest … people imaginable, who saw his life as giving back.”
Police said the gunman, Peter Odighizuwa, first went to the school’s second-floor offices to discuss his academic standing with Professor Dale Reuben. When the conversation ended, Odighizuwa told Reuben to pray for him before walking down the hall to Sutin’s office about 1: 15 p.m. and opening fire at close range with a semi-automatic handgun, police said.
The attacker then shot Thomas Blackwell, a professor, to death in his office before walking downstairs to a lounge where he opened fire again, killing Angela Denise Dales, a 33-year-old student, and injuring three others, police said. Three students pounced on the gunman.
Police said Odighizuwa, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Nigeria, was dismissed from the school yesterday because of his grades. Odighizuwa, 43, was described as a father of four who drove taxis in Chicago before finding the law school on a Web site.
Shooting defendant ordered held
United Press International
A failed law student charged with shooting and killing two faculty members and another student at Appalachian School of Law was ordered held without bond Thursday during his first appearance in Buchanan County General District Court.
Peter Odighizuwa, a 43-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen from Nigeria, said he was sick and needed help.
Odighizuwa, covering his face with a green court document, told a judge he was supposed to see a doctor and didn’t have his medication.
The judge set another preliminary hearing for March 21 and appointed an attorney to represent the student.
He is charged with three counts of capital murder, three counts of attempted murder and several counts of using a firearm to commit a felony.
Meanwhile, a memorial service was held at Grundy Baptist Church for the three victims of the shooting rampage Wednesday. Dead are law school dean Anthony Sutin, 42, associate professor Thomas Blackwell, 41; and student Angela Dales, 33.
Three other students were severely wounded in the shooting before other students were able to knock Odighizuwa to the ground and hold him for police.
Authorities said Odighizuwa had just been informed he had either failed out of college for the second time or had been placed on academic suspension when he went into the offices of Sutin and Blackwell and shot them at close range.
They said he then went down a flight of stairs and opened fire on several students before fleeing out the door. The other students caught him as he exited the building.
Classes at the school were canceled until Tuesday, Jan. 22. Authorities plan to bring grief counselors to campus.
Sutin, a graduate of Harvard Law School and Brandeis University, was a former acting assistant attorney general for the U.S. Department of Justice and a lawyer for Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign in 1992.
Before joining the government, Sutin was a partner in a Washington, D.C., law firm, where he specialized in civil litigation.
Blackwell was a graduate of the University of Texas at Arlington and the Duke University School of Law who specialized in business organizations, intellectual property and technology law. He was an attorney in Dallas, Texas, before joining the law school.
The Appalachian School of Law opened Aug. 11, 1997, in a renovated junior high school in Grundy, a town with two traffic lights and a population of 1,118.
Grundy, located in a mountainous area about 260 miles west of Richmond, Va., was initially a logging community and coal mining town, but was heavily hit by a 1977 flood that damaged 228 buildings.
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Gunman kills three at Va. law school
Brian Mcneill
University Wire
A shooting rampage Wednesday by a disgruntled student at the Appalachian Law School left three dead, including the school’s dean, who was also a former acting assistant U.S. attorney general.
Peter Odighizuwa, 43, a Nigerian resident of Grundy, was apparently angered that he was going to be expelled from school because of low grades, said Mike Stater, public information officer for Virginia State Police.
At about 1:15, Odighizuwa went to the office of Dale Reuben, a professor at the school, to discuss his academic suspension that went into effect Wednesday. As he left the office, police say Odighizuwa told Reuben to pray for him.
Odighizuwa then allegedly entered Dean L. Anthony Sutin’s second floor office and shot the administrator at point-blank range with a .380 semiautomatic handgun. The suspect then allegedly entered the office of Thomas Blackwell, a 41-year-old professor, and shot him point blank as well, police said.
As Odighizuwa left the building, police say he sporadically opened fire on a group of students, killing Angela Denise Dales, a 33-year-old student at the school, and wounded three other students.
Police say a number of students then tackled Odighizuwa and subdued him until police arrived.
Rebecca Brown, a resident of Roanoke, was shot in the abdomen and arm and taken to Bristol Regional Hospital. Martha Short, a resident of Grundy, was shot in the neck and taken to Holston Valley Hospital in Kingsport. Stacey Bean, a resident of Kentucky, was shot in the chest and taken to Bristol Regional Hospital.
Hospital officials and police could not comment on the wounded students’ conditions Wednesday night.
Odighizuwa is being held at Buchanan County Jail and is charged with three counts of capital murder and three counts of using a firearm in the commission of a felony, police said. More charges will be added in the coming days that address the wounded students, police said.
Zeke Jackson, a friend and fellow student of Odighizuwa’s at the law school, said the suspect had an “abrasive, ‘everybody’s against me’ attitude,” and typically kept to himself.
Jackson said Odighizuwa was suspended from the law school last year for poor grades, but Sutin, the murdered dean, decided to give him a second chance.
However, police say that the suspect once again received poor marks in the fall 2001 semester.
Jackson said the failing grades, coupled with his wife and children leaving him in September, left Odighizuwa agitated, and Jackson became worried the suspect was going do something to get back at the school.
“I just knew he was going to do something,” Jackson said. “I thought he’d just take something, or break something. I never thought he’d hurt anyone.”
The law school was opened in 1997 in an attempt to help revitalize Grundy, a struggling coal-mining town on the Virginia-West Virginia border. The school has an enrollment of approximately 170 and has 15 faculty members.
Sutin was a senior official in President Bill Clinton’s Justice Department and was also an associate professor at the school.
“The ASL community is profoundly shocked and saddened by this tragedy,” said a statement issued by the law school. “We extend our heartfelt sympathy to the family and friends of the victims.”
A memorial service will be held Thursday at noon in the Grundy Baptist Church, located next to the law school.
Law school shooting kills 3, critically wounds 3
Associated Press
Ventura County Star (California)
GRUNDY, Va. (AP)—A law school student upset about his grades went on a shooting spree Wednesday, killing three people and critically wounding three others before he was wrestled to the ground by students, officials said.
The victims included the dean of the Appalachian School of Law and a professor who were gunned down in their offices. The third person slain was a student, said Ellen Qualls, a spokeswoman for Gov. Mark Warner.
“When I got there there were bodies laying everywhere,” said Dr. Jack Briggs, who has a private practice a half-mile from the school in this tiny western Virginia community.
Briggs said he had treated the suspect in the past year. He described the gunman as a Nigerian in his early 40s who had flunked out last year and been allowed to return.
“I think they were getting ready to tell him that he had not made the grade this year,” Briggs said.
Dean L. Anthony Sutin and the professor were “executed” in their offices, Briggs said.
He said the gunman then went downstairs into a common area and opened fire on a crowd of students, killing one and wounding three others. He was tackled by four male students as he left the building.
“They just wanted the guy,” Briggs said. “They weren’t worried about their own personal safety.”
Other details were not immediately available, but Qualls said the weapon used was a .380-caliber semiautomatic handgun.
The three wounded students were taken to Buchanan General Hospital, Qualls said. The governor said they were in critical condition.
“We knew before we heard there was a shooting that something was wrong,” said Tiffany Street, who works at a nearby motel. “There were fire trucks, ambulances, state police and cops all heading toward the school.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Street, 20. “Grundy’s a very small town, and I’ve been here all my life.”
The private law school has an enrollment of about 170 students.
The governor, who had served on the school’s board until he took office last week, said he was shocked and saddened by the shooting.
“I commend the students who acted swiftly to apprehend the suspect, who is now in custody,” Warner said. “My heart goes out to the school and the community. I know that such a close-knit community will feel such a tragedy especially deeply.”
Sutin, a 1984 graduate of Harvard Law School, was also an associate professor at the school. He left the Justice Department to found the school after working for the Democratic National Committee and Bill Clinton’s campaign in 1992, according to the Web site of Jurist, the Legal Education Network.
The school opened five years ago in a renovated junior high school in Grundy, a town of about 1,100 just a few miles south of the Kentucky and West Virginia state lines.
School founders hope to ease a shortage of lawyers in the coalfields of southwest Virginia, help change the region’s image and foster renewal in Appalachia. The American Bar Association rejected the school’s first application for accreditation in 1999.
GRUNDY IS SMALL VALLEY TOWN WHERE LIFE IS HARD
Lon Wagner
The Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk, Va.)
Grundy is a tiny town tucked deep in the valleys of southwestern Virginia.
It is known for several things: devastating floods that seem to come about every 20 years; a high school wrestling team that routinely wins state titles; and a decade-long effort to thwart flooding by bulldozing its old business district and rebuilding across the river.
The Appalachian School of Law, the location of Wednesday’s shootings, was established in 1997 in the town’s old junior high and elementary schools and sits in the heart of Grundy.
The law school and the town’s move are part of an effort to revitalize Grundy, which has gone boom and bust several times since its founding.
The town is surrounded by ridge after ridge of 2,000-foot-tall mountains. The business district was built at the confluence of the Levisa River and Slate Creek, one of the few flat, buildable pieces of land in Buchanan County.
By 1920 or so, lumber companies had cut down all the virgin oak and yellow poplar. Just as they left town, coal was discovered and Norfolk & Western laid a railroad to haul it out.
In the 1930s, then again in the early 1970s, the small town was flush with coal money.
In 1977, 15 inches of rain fell on Grundy during one day, raced down steep mountain slopes and a wall of water surged through the downtown.
Shortly after that, coal got pushed aside by cheap oil.
Grundy residents have spent the past 25 years hoping for coal prices to recover, and trying to flood-proof the town. It is now home to 1,150.
Dean, 2 Others Fatally Shot At Rural Virginia Law School
Fredrick Kunkle and Craig Timberg
The Washington Post
A failing student allegedly shot three people to death and wounded three others yesterday at the Appalachian School of Law, the ambitious school created five years ago to bring newcomers and a new way of life to southwest Virginia’s struggling coal-mining region.
The midday attack ended when students overpowered the gunman and held him for Buchanan County sheriff’s deputies, officials said.
The law school was founded by community leaders eager to revitalize a region decimated by the decline of the coal industry. Built in a refurbished junior high school near Grundy’s small downtown, Appalachian had begun to live up to its promise, bringing fresh faces and economic activity. One of those fresh faces was L. Anthony Sutin, a senior official in President Bill Clinton’s Justice Department who, along with his wife, Margaret Lawton, began to do exactly what the school’s founders had hoped. They both were on the faculty—Sutin was dean—and were active in the arts council, their church and civic life.
He was among those killed yesterday.
“It’s the ultimate of ironic tragedies,” said Kent Markus, Sutin’s Harvard Law School roommate and fellow Justice Department official. “Here’s a case where the victim was one of the kindest . . . people imaginable, who saw his life as giving back.”
Police said the student, Peter Odighizuwa, went to the school’s second-floor offices to discuss his academic standing with professor Dale Reuben. When the conversation ended about 1:15 p.m., Odighizuwa told Reuben to pray for him, walked down the hall to Sutin’s office and opened fire at close range with a semiautomatic handgun, police said.
The attacker then fatally shot Thomas F. Blackwell, a professor, in his office before walking downstairs to a lounge where he opened fire again, killing Angela Denise Dales, a 33-year-old student, and injuring three other students, police said. Three students pounced on the gunman and held him until help arrived.
Police said Odighizuwa is a Nigerian immigrant who was suspended from the school yesterday because of his grades. People in the remote mountain town of 1,100 described Odighizuwa, 43, as a father of four who drove taxis in Chicago before finding the law school on a Web site.
He was charged with three counts of capital murder and three weapons violations and was being held in the Buchanan County jail.
Odighizuwa was one of the newcomers welcomed by Grundy residents since the founding of the school. He held an out-of-state real estate agent’s license but was unsuccessful in finding work at any of Grundy’s realty firms, instead taking a job in a grocery store, said David Branham, 24, an agent in his family’s insurance and real estate business. Branham said Odighizuwa arrived in town about 1 1/2 years ago.
Jim Wayne Childress, a lawyer in Grundy who was one of the first to graduate from Appalachian Law, said Odighizuwa’s wife was a nurse at Buchanan General Hospital and supported the family while her husband went to school.
“He had a little bit of financial trouble,” Childress said. “The community pitched in and helped him out a bit.”
News of the shooting spread rapidly through the close-knit community.
“It’s a small town, and everybody knows each other,” said Bill Neeley, 45.
“The professors were very involved in the community,” said Neeley, who lives in town and works in the corporate office for Food City there. “I guess a good word to describe everyone is amazed and shocked by what they’ve seen today. You read and you hear about things like this, but you never expect it to happen here.”
Sutin, particularly, was well known. The promise of the law school lured him from Washington at the height of his career. “He enjoyed the idea of getting out of D.C., into a different environment,” said Cliff Sloan, a Harvard classmate who is general counsel for the Internet operations of The Washington Post and Newsweek. “And I know he felt strongly he could make a contribution.”
Sutin, a 1984 graduate of Harvard Law School, was dean and associate professor of law at Appalachian. He had worked on election law and campaign finance issues at the Hogan & Hartson law firm in the District. He worked for the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton presidential campaign in 1992. He was formerly acting assistant attorney general for the office of legislative affairs at the Department of Justice.
“Tony was an incredibly kind, exceptionally bright and intensely dedicated public servant who was committed to bettering the welfare of all Americans,” said former attorney general Janet Reno. “One of his major accomplishments was helping to bring community policing to cities and towns across the nation.”
Markus said Sutin had a passion for politics and public service but was eager to have a more direct connection with the people he was helping.
“He saw this as a much more tangible way that he could make a difference,” Markus said.
Sutin had just returned from China, where he and his wife had adopted a 14-month-old girl.
Blackwell graduated with highest honors from Duke University’s law school and practiced in Dallas before becoming a professor. He taught contracts and intellectual property. His wife also is on the school’s faculty.
Buchanan County Attorney Mickey McGlothlin called Sutin and Blackwell “two of the finest gentlemen I had ever met.” McGlothlin’s wife is on the board of the law school.
At least 18 members of the board were in Richmond yesterday to host a reception for new Gov. Mark R. Warner (D), who, until his swearing-in, was also a member of the board.
Jackie R. Briggs, a former Navy doctor and former emergency room physician from Grundy, was among the first on the scene of the shootings. He said it was clear that Sutin and Blackwell were shot at close range in their offices.
“This was a slaughter,” Briggs said.
He also said that he had treated Odighizuwa since his arrival in Grundy and that Odighizuwa had a reputation at the law school and around town as a troubled man.
“Everybody knows this guy,” Briggs said. “He is a walking time bomb.”
The shooting has left this experiment in coal country shaken, but its founders said they would move on. “We’ll go forward as we have since this school started,” said Joseph E. Wolfe, vice chairman of the board. “It’s certainly going to be something that’s going to be ingrained in the history of the school.”
Staff writers Michael D. Shear, R.H. Melton and Maria Glod and researcher Bobbye Pratt contributed to this report.
Gunman on rampage at US college
Western Morning News (Plymouth)
FOUR students overpowered a gunman who went on a shooting spree at their US college last night, killing three people in what a doctor described as “executions”.
The four students tackled the man while he was still armed with a .380 semi-automatic pistol and managed to hold him until police arrived at the Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, Virginia.
He had already shot and killed three people, including the dean of the college and one of the professors, and left three other students critically injured. The doctor who was the first medical worker on the scene told Fox News the dean of the school, Anthony Sutin, had been “executed” with shots to the head, and another member of staff had been shot in the back as he lay on the ground.
“It appears as though some of these shots were after one professor was down and they were shot at point blank range,” said Dr Jack Briggs.
“Two shots were shot into the dean in the head. It appears he was executed.
“It looked like a war zone. There were bodies everywhere.”
The two staff members were apparently shot in front of their secretaries before the gunman went on a spree in which he shot randomly at students.
The doctor said the gunman was a “foreign exchange student” and had been on the point of being told to leave the law school which has around 170 students and was founded in 1997.
“Four students tackled him and took him down,” said the doctor. “They got him down and kept him for his police. I do not believe he had given up his weapon.
“This student was a foreign student who had had difficulty. He flunked out of school last year. He was given another chance, but this was the end of the first semester. I believe that the dean was about to tell him that he would have to leave. He took his anger out on the people who I think he thought were responsible for him leaving the school.”
The three students were described as being “critical” by Dr Briggs, and had been transferred by helicopter to hospitals near the small town, which is in a rural area of the Appalachian Mountains.
Failed law student ‘executes’ three in campus shooting;
Flavia Munn
Western Daily Press
THREE people were killed at a US college last night after a failed student went on a shooting spree.
The college dean and a professor were among those gunned down when the man opened fire at the Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, deep in rural Virginia.
A further three students were critically injured before the gunman was overpowered by four other students. The students managed to hold down the man while he was still armed with a .380 semi-automatic pistol until police arrived.
The gunman’s doctor, who was first on the scene, described the killings as “executions” and said his patient was like a “timebomb waiting to go off.”
It comes after two teenagers were shot dead last week at a New York school and around 27 people have been killed in school shootings in America in the past three years.
In last night’s incident the dean, Anthony Sutin, was shot in the head and another member of staff was shot in the back as he lay on the ground.
Dr Jack Briggs told Fox News: “It appears as though some of these shots were after one professor was down and they were shot at point blank range. Two shots were shot into the dean in the head. It appears he was executed.
“It looked like a war zone. There were bodies everywhere.”
The two staff members were apparently shot in front of their secretaries before the gunman went on a spree in which he shot randomly at students.
The doctor said the gunman was a “foreign exchange student” and was on the point of being told to leave the law school which has around 170 students and was founded in 1997.
“Four students tackled him and took him down, ” said the doctor.
“They got him down and kept him for the police. I do not believe he had given up his weapon.
“This student was a foreign student who had had difficulty. He flunked out of school last year.
“He was given another chance, but this was the end of the first semester. I believe that the dean was about to tell him that he would have to leave.
“He took his anger out on the people who I think he thought were responsible for him leaving the school.”
The three students were described as being “critical” by Dr Briggs, and had been transferred by helicopter to hospitals near the small town, which is in a rural area of the Appalachian Mountains.
The doctor added: “The person who did the shooting was a patient of mine.
I saw him about six months ago. He was complaining of stress.”
“He was a timebomb waiting to go off.”
The college was set up in 1997 to help the run-down coal mining area’s economy and Mr Sutin, a graduate of Harvard Law School, was made principal with a staff of just 15.
Dr Briggs paid tribute to the dean, who was reported to have been the chief legal adviser to former presidential candidate Al Gore’s failed bid for the White House in 2000.
He said: “He was a real good guy.”
The three female students who were injured were being treated in hospital last night.
One victim was said to be in a “fair” condition and the other two were undergoing surgery.
The UK’s worst school shooting was the Dunblane massacre when Thomas Hamilton opened fire on a primary school in 1996, killing 16 children and one teacher.
NIGERIAN STUDENT WHO HAD BEEN DISMISSED IS CHARGED
Rex Bowman
Winston-Salem Journal (Winston Salem, NC)
An angry student killed three people and wounded three more yesterday at the tiny Appalachian School of Law before fellow students tackled and subdued him, according to authorities.
L. Anthony Sutin, 42, the dean of the school, and Thomas Blackwell, 41, an associate professor, were in their offices when they were shot. The third person killed was student Angela Dales, 33, according to state police.
Peter Odighizuwa, 43, a Nigerian student who had been dismissed from the school, was charged with three counts of capital murder and three counts of using a firearm in the commission of a felony, said Mike Stater, a spokesman for the state police. Odighizuwa is being held in the Buchanan County Jail.
He was dismissed last week for poor grades and notified that his financial aid would be suspended effective yesterday, said Chris Clifton, the financial-aid director in the office of student services. Odighizuwa came into the financial-aid office Tuesday and was threatening and verbally abusive, Clifton said.
“He was very hostile.” Clifton said. “This student had previously threatened the entire office of student services. He had even stolen his file once before.”
Clifton said he was in his office on the first floor yesterday when the shootings occurred about 1:15 p.m.
“We heard a lot of commotion outside (the office) and heard some gunshots. Two students had just left our office. Apparently he (the gunman) met them in the hallway next to the courtyard. When we heard all that, I immediately locked the door and I got the people in the office out,” Clifton said.
“We climbed through a window - me, two employees and three students who were in the office,” Clifton said. “I went back in to see if everybody was OK. By the time I got in, the students had (the gunman) on the ground.”
The wounded students are Rebecca Claire Brown, 38, of Roanoke, Martha Madeline Short, 37, of Grundy and Stacey Bean, 22, of Berea, Ky. All three were in fair condition last night, according to hospital officials.
Stater said that the suspect went into professor Dale Rubin’s office to discuss his grades and his suspension. As he left that office, he asked Rubin to pray for him, according to reports.
The suspect then went into the offices of Sutin and Blackwell and opened fire with a Jennings .380 semiautomatic pistol.
He then went downstairs and started shooting at the students, killing one and injuring the other three. As he walked out of the building, he was subdued by students and forced to the ground until Buchanan County sheriff’s deputies arrived to make the arrest.”
The law school opened in 1997 in a renovated junior high school in Grundy, a mountain town of 1,100 residents.
The school, which has an enrollment of about 170, was opened with the hope of easing a shortage of lawyers in southwest Virginia.
Zeke Jackson of Fort Worth, Texas, a student at the law school, said of Odighizuwa: “I thought he was going to hurt a student. I thought he was going to lash out at a student. He had been explosive when he was told he was wrong. I feel kind of guilty. I really wish I had talked to the dean of students or somebody. I wish I had gone into the dean’s office and said, ‘You need to get rid of this guy.’”
Dr. Jackie Briggs of Grundy said that Odighizuwa’s wife is a nurse’s aide at Buchanan General Hospital and that the nurses there had taken up a collection to “keep the kids from starving.”
Odighizuwa’s wife had left him about three months ago and taken their four children with her, Clifton said.
Delegate Jackie T. Stump, D-Buchanan, disclosed the killings during a packed hearing on the state budget in the General Assembly Building. The money committees observed a moment of silence to remember the victims.
Later, a tearful Stump, standing by the governor, told reporters, “You read about it and hear about it in other areas. When it comes home, it really hurts - good people.”
Rex Bowman is a staff writer at the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
3 Shot Dead, 3 Wounded in School Shooting in U.S., XINHUA
Xinhua
WASHINGTON, January 16 (Xinhua)—Three were killed and three other wounded when a gunman opened fire at a law school in southwestern Virginia Wednesday.
The gunman, a student at the Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, Virginia, was described as “a time bomb” by a local doctor who recently treated him for stress. One of those killed was the dean of the school, L. Anthony Sutin, a former acting assistant U.S. attorney general. Another faculty member and a student were also killed, said Ellen Qualls, press secretary for Governor Mark Warner.
“The dean of the law school had been executed in his office and a professor had been executed in his office,” said Dr. Jack Briggs, a coroner for Buchanan County. “The man then came down the stairs—before we got there—and shot four students.” The suspected gunman was handed over to police after being tackled by students at the tiny school of about 170 students. Briggs said the shooter was a foreign student who had difficulty during his first year and had flunked out.
Briggs, who is a physician, said he had treated this student for stress about six months ago. “He was a time bomb waiting to go off,” the physician said. The three wounded students were taken to Buchanan General Hospital and later transferred to other hospitals for treatment. Two of them were in surgery and the third was in fair condition, according to hospital officials.. Sutin had served as acting general counsel for the Democratic Party and a lawyer for the 1992 presidential campaign of Bill Clinton. He also held various positions in the U.S. Department of Justice, where he was appointed acting assistant attorney general for legislative affairs by then U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno.
Students charge gunman, held him down for police
Chris Kahn
The Associated Press State & Local Wire
Tracy Bridges didn’t have much time to think when he saw suspected killer Peter Odighizuwa on the front lawn of the Appalachian School of Law.
Odighizuwa was holding a gun and so was Bridges, a student and sheriff’s deputy.
“I just reacted,” said Bridges, 25, who tackled Odighizuwa with classmates Todd Ross, 30, and Ted Besen, 37, moments after a shooting spree at the school Wednesday left three dead and three wounded.
The three men pinned Odighizuwa to the ground, and Bridges handcuffed the man’s arms behind his back.
Odighizuwa, 42, a former student who was dismissed on Tuesday for bad grades, is accused of shooting Dean L. Anthony Sutin and Professor Thomas Blackwell dead in their offices. Student Angela Dales later died of gunshot wounds.
As screaming students started climbing out of windows, Bridges and Besen said their police and military training took over.
“Hopefully if I’m ever on the other end of something like this, someone would try to help me,” Bridges said.
“I’m a former Marine, former police officer,” Besen said. “Who better to do that? I’m trained to do that. I’m not going to let him shoot anyone else if I could.”
Ross downplayed the notion that they were heroes.
“I didn’t do anything until I knew I was safe,” he said.
Odighizuwa, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Nigeria, is scheduled to be arraigned Thursday morning in Grundy General District Court on capital murder charges.
Chris Clifton, the school’s financial officer, said he met with Odighizuwa on Tuesday afternoon with other school officials to notify him that he was being permanently dismissed for poor grades. Odighizuwa, who had flunked out and then was readmitted a year before, would have to pay back $9,250 in federal school loans.
Wednesday, Odighizuwa stopped in the office of professor Dale Rubin to talk about his grades and as he left reportedly asked Rubin to pray for him, police said. He then walked to Sutin’s and Blackwell’s offices and shot them with a .380-caliber pistol, State Police spokesman Mike Stater said. Blackwell had taught contract law to Odighizuwa.
“There were three quick shots, then we heard I think three more,” Bridges said.
Bridges and Besen, a former police officer from Wilmington, N.C., crept down a back stairwell to the parking lot, and Bridges got his gun out of the car.
Odighizuwa had walked outside and stood with a confused look on his face, Bridges said.
“I planned on blindsiding him from behind,” Besen said. “He sat the weapon down and raised his hands up in the air. I didn’t know if he was praying.”
Besen said he ran toward Odighizuwa and told him to get on the ground.
“He kind of came at me. He swung and hit me in the jaw,” Besen said.
Once pinned down, he kept shouting, “I have nowhere to go. I have nowhere to go.”’
Student opens fire at law school, killing three and injuring three
Chris Kahn
The Associated Press State & Local Wire
A student upset about flunking out of law school shot his dean and a professor to death in their offices before opening fire in a commons area, killing a student and injuring three others, authorities said.
Peter Odighizuwa, 43, went to the Appalachia School of Law on Wednesday to talk to his dean, L. Anthony Sutin, about his dismissal, officials said. He shot Sutin and Professor Thomas Blackwell, who taught Odighizuwa’s contracts classes during the fall and winter, with a .380-caliber pistol, authorities and students said.
Odighizuwa, known around the rural campus as “Peter O,” had been struggling with his grades for more than a year and had been dismissed once before. Chris Clifton, the school’s financial aid officer, met with Odighizuwa a day earlier when Odighizuwa learned he was to be kicked out of school.
“He was angry. He thought he was being treated unfairly, and he wanted to see his transcript,” Clifton said. Odighizuwa, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Nigeria, scheduled a meeting for Wednesday to talk to school officials about his grades.
“I don’t think Peter knew at this time that it was going to be permanent and final,” Clifton said.
Also killed was student Angela Dales, 33, of Vansant, said State Police spokesman Mike Stater. Three injured students were in fair condition at southwest Virginia hospitals.
Odighizuwa is being held in the Buchanan County Jail on three counts of capital murder and three counts of using a firearm in the commission of a felony, authorities said. He is scheduled to be arraigned Thursday morning in Grundy General District Court.
Dr. Jack Briggs, who has a private practice a half-mile from the school, said Odighizuwa went downstairs from Sutin’s and Blackwell’s offices to a commons area and opened fire on the crowd there.
“When I got there there were bodies laying everywhere,” Briggs said.
Odighizuwa left the building and dropped his gun after being confronted by student Todd Ross of Johnson City, Tenn. Ross said he then tackled Odighizuwa, and two or three other students helped hold him down.
Odighizuwa kept saying, ‘“I have nowhere to go. I have nowhere to go.”’ Ross said.
Hospital officials identified the three wounded students as Rebecca Brown, 38, of Roanoke; Martha Madeline Short, 37, of Grundy; and Stacy Beans, 22, of Berea, Ky. Amy Stevens, a spokeswoman for Wellmont Health Systems, said Short was in fair condition, and Beans and Brown were in fair condition after surgery Wednesday evening.
Justin Marlowe, a first-year law student from Richwood, W.Va., said the suspect had been in all of his classes.
“He was a real quiet guy who kept to himself. He didn’t talk to anybody, but he gave no indication that he was capable of something like this,” Marlowe said. He said “the dean bent over backwards to get him enrolled again” when Odighizuwa flunked out last spring.
Other classmates, however, described him as an “abrasive” person who would regularly have swearing outbursts in class when he was challenged by classmates or the professor.
“I knew he’d do something like this,” Zeke Jackson, 40, who tried to recruit him for the schools’ Black Law Students’ Association.
The private law school has an enrollment of about 170 students. It opened five years ago in a renovated junior high school to help ease a shortage of lawyers in the region and foster renewal in Appalachia.
Sutin, a 1984 graduate of Harvard Law School, also was an associate professor at the school. He left a Justice Department position as an assistant attorney general to found the school after working for the Democratic National Committee and Bill Clinton’s campaign in 1992, according to the Web site of Jurist, the Legal Education Network.
“My thoughts and prayers go out to Mr. Sutin’s wife, Margaret, their two children and to all of their family and friends,” said Attorney General John Ashcroft.
“The entire Department of Justice is mourning the loss of a dedicated public servant who served the Department of Justice with distinction, integrity and honor.”
Blackwell, who enjoyed running and playing trumpet, moved to the area from Dallas, Tex., about three years ago. Constance C. Bausell, 52, of Grundy, served with Blackwell on a committee at her church searching for a new pastor.
Even though Blackwell was new to the area, “he fit in like a glove,” Bausell said.
Dean, prof, student dead in shooting rampage at Virginia law school; man who flunked out held
Chris Kahn
The Associated Press State & Local Wire
Peter Odighizuwa returned to his law school campus hoping to get another chance from his dean after flunking out for a second time. But he came armed with a pistol and, moments after being rejected, authorities say he started firing.
Odighizuwa shot his dean and a professor to death in their offices and then opened fire on a crowd of students, killing one and injuring three others before students tackled the gunman and handcuffed him, officials said.
“He was angry. He thought he was being treated unfairly, and he wanted to see his transcript,” said Chris Clifton, the school’s financial aid officer.
“I don’t think Peter knew at this time that it (dismissal) was going to be permanent and final,” Clifton added.
Odighizuwa, a 43-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen from Nigeria, was scheduled to be arraigned Thursday in Grundy General District Court.
Odighizuwa went to the campus of the Appalachia School of Law on Wednesday to talk to his dean, L. Anthony Sutin, about his dismissal, officials said. He shot Sutin and professor Thomas Blackwell, who taught contract law to Odighizuwa, with a .380-caliber pistol, authorities and students said.
Police said the third person slain was student Angela Dales, 33. The injured students were in fair condition at area hospitals.
The suspect, known around the rural campus as “Peter O,” had been struggling with his grades for more than a year and had been dismissed once before. Clifton met with Odighizuwa a day earlier when the student learned he was to be kicked out of school.
Odighizuwa is being held in the Buchanan County Jail on three counts of capital murder and three counts of using a firearm in the commission of a felony, authorities said.
Dr. Jack Briggs, who has a private practice a half-mile from the school, said Odighizuwa went downstairs from Sutin’s and Blackwell’s offices to a commons area and opened fire on students.
“When I got there, there were bodies laying everywhere,” Briggs said.
Odighizuwa left the building and dropped his gun after being confronted. Students then tackled him and helped hold him down. A student who is a sheriff’s deputy handcuffed Odighizuwa.
Odighizuwa kept saying, “I have nowhere to go. I have nowhere to go,” said student Todd Ross, 30, of Johnson City, Tenn., who helped subdue the alleged shooter.
Justin Marlowe, a first-year law student from Richwood, W.Va., said the suspect had been in all of his classes.
“He was a real quiet guy who kept to himself,” Marlowe said. “He didn’t talk to anybody, but he gave no indication that he was capable of something like this.”
“The dean bent over backwards to get him enrolled again” when Odighizuwa flunked out last spring, Marlowe said.
Other classmates, however, described the suspect as an “abrasive” person who would regularly have outbursts in class when he was challenged by classmates or the professor.
“I knew he’d do something like this,” said Zeke Jackson, 40, who tried to recruit him for the school’s Black Law Students’ Association.
The private law school has an enrollment of about 170 students. It opened five years ago in a renovated junior high school to help ease a shortage of lawyers in the region and foster renewal in Appalachia.
Sutin, a 1984 graduate of Harvard Law School, also was an associate professor at the school. He left the Justice Department to help found the school, and had worked for the Democratic National Committee and Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign, according to the Web site of Jurist, the Legal Education Network.
Attorney General John Ashcroft issued a statement expressing his condolences to Sutin’s wife and their two children.
Blackwell moved to the area from Dallas about three years ago.
Constance C. Bausell, 52, of Grundy, served with Blackwell on a committee at her church searching for a new pastor. Even though Blackwell was somewhat new to the area, she said, “he fit in like a glove.”
Students tackled gunman in law school shooting spree, held him down until police arrived
Chris Kahn
The Associated Press State & Local Wire
Tracy Bridges didn’t have much time to think when he saw Peter Odighizuwa on the front lawn of the Appalachian School of Law moments after he allegedly went on a killing spree.
“I just reacted,” said Bridges, a student and sheriff’s deputy who tackled Odighizuwa with classmates Todd Ross of Johnson City, Tenn., and Ted Besen after the Wednesday shootings.
The three men pinned Odighizuwa to the ground, and Bridges handcuffed the man’s arms behind his back.
Odighizuwa, 42, a former student who was dismissed on Tuesday for bad grades, is accused of shooting and killing Dean L. Anthony Sutin, Professor Thomas Blackwell and student Angela Dales.
As screaming students started climbing out of windows, Bridges and Besen said their police and military training took over.
“I’m a former Marine, former police officer,” said Besen, 37. “Who better to do that? I’m trained to do that. I’m not going to let him shoot anyone else if I could.”
Odighizuwa, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Nigeria, was scheduled to be arraigned Thursday in Grundy General District Court on capital murder charges.
Chris Clifton, the school’s financial officer, said he met with Odighizuwa on Tuesday afternoon along with other school officials to notify him that he was being permanently dismissed for poor grades. Odighizuwa had flunked out and then was readmitted a year before.
On Wednesday, Odighizuwa stopped in the office of professor Dale Rubin to talk about his grades and as he left reportedly asked Rubin to pray for him, police said. He then walked to Sutin’s and Blackwell’s offices and shot them with a .380-caliber pistol, State Police spokesman Mike Stater said. Blackwell had taught contract law to Odighizuwa.
“There were three quick shots, then we heard, I think, three more,” said Bridges, 25.
Bridges and Besen, a former police officer from Wilmington, N.C., crept down a back stairwell to the parking lot, and Bridges got his gun out of the car.
Odighizuwa had walked outside and stood with a confused look on his face, Bridges said.
“I planned on blindsiding him from behind,” Besen said. “He sat the weapon down and raised his hands up in the air. I didn’t know if he was praying.”
Besen said he ran toward Odighizuwa and told him to get on the ground.
“He kind of came at me. He swung and hit me in the jaw,” Besen said.
Once pinned down, he kept shouting, “I have nowhere to go. I have nowhere to go.”’
Suspect in law school shooting tells judge he is sick
Chris Kahn
The Associated Press State & Local Wire
A former law student who is accused of killing his dean, a law professor and another student and wounding three others told a judge Thursday that he is sick and needs help.
Peter Odighizuwa, 43, shuffled into Buchanan County General District Court in leg chains, surrounded by police officers.
Hiding his face behind his green arrest warrant, Odighizuwa told Judge Patrick Johnson, “I was supposed to see my doctor. He was supposed to help me out … I don’t have my medication.”
Odighizuwa went to the Appalachian School of Law on Wednesday to talk to his dean, L. Anthony Sutin, about his dismissal, officials said. He shot Sutin and Professor Thomas Blackwell, who taught Odighizuwa’s contracts classes during the fall and winter, with a .380-caliber pistol, authorities and students said.
Also killed was student Angela Dales, 33, of Vansant, said State Police spokesman Mike Stater. Three injured students were hospitalized in fair condition.
Prosecutors have charged Odighizuwa with three counts of capital murder, three counts of attempted capital murder and six charges for use of a firearm in a felony.
A few minutes before his arraignment, Odighizuwa told reporters as he was led into the courtroom, “I was sick, I was sick. I need help.”
Court records show that Odighizuwa was arrested Aug. 15 for assault and battery of his wife, Abieyuwa Odighizuwa. The police report said he hit his wife in the face with his fist and bruised her right eye. A hearing is set for Aug. 6.
When Johnson said he would appoint defense lawyer James C. Turk Jr. to represent him, Odighizuwa asked for Tazewell attorney James Carmody, who is representing him in the assault case. But Johnson appointed Turk and said, “Once you’ve talked with him, I’m sure you’ll see he can help you.”
Odighizuwa will remain held without bond pending a preliminary hearing March 21. Carmody declined to comment when reached by telephone.
Odighizuwa, known around the rural campus as “Peter O,” had been struggling with his grades for more than a year and had been dismissed once before. Chris Clifton, the school’s financial aid officer, met with Odighizuwa a day earlier when Odighizuwa learned he was to be kicked out of school.
“He was angry. He thought he was being treated unfairly, and he wanted to see his transcript,” Clifton said. Odighizuwa, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Nigeria, scheduled a meeting for Wednesday to talk to school officials about his grades.
“I don’t think Peter knew at this time that it was going to be permanent and final,” Clifton said.
Dr. Jack Briggs, who has a private practice a half-mile from the school, said Odighizuwa went downstairs from Sutin’s and Blackwell’s offices to a commons area and opened fire on the crowd there.
“When I got there there were bodies laying everywhere,” Briggs said.
Odighizuwa left the building and dropped his gun after being confronted by student Todd Ross of Johnson City, Tenn. Ross said he then tackled Odighizuwa, and two or three other students helped hold him down.
Odighizuwa kept saying, ‘“I have nowhere to go. I have nowhere to go.”’ Ross said.
Hospital officials identified the three wounded students as Rebecca Brown, 38, of Roanoke; Martha Madeline Short, 37, of Grundy; and Stacy Beans, 22, of Berea, Ky.
Justin Marlowe, a first-year law student from Richwood, W.Va., said the suspect had been in all of his classes.
“He was a real quiet guy who kept to himself. He didn’t talk to anybody, but he gave no indication that he was capable of something like this,” Marlowe said. He said “the dean bent over backwards to get him enrolled again” when Odighizuwa flunked out last spring.
Other classmates, however, described him as an “abrasive” person who would regularly have swearing outbursts in class when he was challenged by classmates or the professor.
“I knew he’d do something like this,” Zeke Jackson, 40, who tried to recruit him for the schools’ Black Law Students’ Association.
The private law school has an enrollment of about 170 students. It opened five years ago in a renovated junior high school to help ease a shortage of lawyers in the region and foster renewal in Appalachia.
Sutin, a 1984 graduate of Harvard Law School, also was an associate professor at the school. He left a Justice Department position as an assistant attorney general to found the school after working for the Democratic National Committee and Bill Clinton’s campaign in 1992, according to the Web site of Jurist, the Legal Education Network.
“My thoughts and prayers go out to Mr. Sutin’s wife, Margaret, their two children and to all of their family and friends,” said Attorney General John Ashcroft.
“The entire Department of Justice is mourning the loss of a dedicated public servant who served the Department of Justice with distinction, integrity and honor.”
Blackwell, who enjoyed running and playing trumpet, moved to the area from Dallas, Tex., about three years ago. Constance C. Bausell, 52, of Grundy, served with Blackwell on a committee at her church searching for a new pastor.
Even though Blackwell was new to the area, “he fit in like a glove,” Bausell said.
Woman shot at law school went to Paducah high school
The Associated Press State & Local Wire
A Paducah man said he watched as his friend and former high school classmate was shot by a gunman who killed three at a western Virginia law school on Wednesday, the man’s father said.
Sam Clymer, a student at the Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, Va., said he saw Stacey Beans, 22, get wounded by a bullet, Clymer’s dad, McCracken Circuit Judge Craig Clymer, told The Paducah Sun.
Beans was shot in the chest, hospital officials said. She underwent surgery at a Bristol, Tenn., hospital the day of the shooting and was in fair condition on Thursday.
Peter Odighizuwa, 43, a former student at the school, is accused of killing his dean, a professor and another student. Police said he was upset about being expelled from school for failing grades.
Clymer said his son planned to drive to the hospital to see Beans.
“He sounded really depressed about it and wanted to check on Stacey,” Craig Clymer said.
Beans is the stepdaughter of David Wrinkle, an assistant McCracken county attorney.
Attorneys around the McCracken County Courthouse described Beans as a bright and articulate woman who couldn’t wait to become a lawyer. She graduated from Berea College last year.
In high school, Beans was a member of the choir, German club and mock trial team, according to a 1996 school yearbook.
Odighizuwa, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Nigeria, went to the law school on Wednesday to talk to his dean, L. Anthony Sutin, about his dismissal for failing grades, officials said. He allegedly shot Sutin and professor Thomas Blackwell, as well as 33-year-old student Angela Dales, officials said.
Chris Kahn
The Associated Press State & Local Wire
Mourners lit candles, then sat silently in their glow.
One day after gunfire shattered the serenity of this tiny, southwest Virginia town, there seemed little anyone at the Appalachian School of Law and the community it calls home could do but sit in silence, lost in their agony and questions of “why?”
“Columbine seemed like a world away, until lunch yesterday,” the Rev. Stan Parris told a few hundred people at a memorial service at Grundy Baptist Church.
On Wednesday, a disgruntled student upset about flunking out of the law school arrived with a .380 pistol and shot dead the dean, a professor and a student. Three other students were wounded, and they remained hospitalized Thursday.
Peter Odighizuwa, 43, was charged Thursday with three counts of capital murder, three counts of attempted capital murder and six felony firearms charges. Prosecutor Sheila Tolliver said outside the church that she would seek the death penalty.
Tolliver then entered the school’s cafeteria with about 150 others to watch the memorial service on closed-circuit TV because the church couldn’t hold everyone.
Dean L. Anthony Sutin, 42, and Professor Thomas Blackwell, 41, were killed in their offices. Student Angela Dales, 33, of Vansant, died later, also from a gunshot wound.
In Grundy, a gritty coal town of about 1,100 in the shadow of two great mountain ridges, violent crime has been an infrequent occurrence, Parris told the mourners.
He asked them to pray, and reassured them that “God will bring justice.”
Some were still shaken by the events of Wednesday, and by the losses.
“We’ve never had something this scary,” said Constance C. Bausell, 52, a school teacher who said she knew Blackwell from the church they both attended.
After the service, a few hundred students, families and residents gathered to cry. Nearby, people placed roses and carnations at the base of the stone school sign in a makeshift memorial, the American flag on the school lawn at half mast above.
“We feel in our hearts the deepest pain,” said Rabbi Stanley Funston, who leads a synagogue in Bluefield, W.V. that Sutin attended during the holidays.
Sutin was a hands-on administrator who knew his students’ names, they said.
“He just had this integrity about him,” said Mary Kilpatrick, who will graduate in a semester.
Brian Floyd, 27, said Sutin checked on him when Floyd went to the hospital last April with a bleeding ulcer.
“He called me at the hospital from his office just to see how I was doing,” Floyd said.
Blackwell was remembered as an avid runner and trumpet player.
“I knew him from choir,” said Kenneth Brown, 28, a first-year law student. “We were going to start a little band.”
Dales, a single mother, was a boisterous person putting herself through school.
“She was just this high-tempo person,” said Alex VanBuren, 32, of Johnson City, Tenn. “She always got good grades.”
Shootings leave mark on Virginia town
Cassandra Perry
The Associated Press State & Local Wire
An AP Opinion Exchange
Delta Democrat Times
While working at my desk on Wednesday, I turned around to take a peek at the television and saw a very familiar name come flashing across the screen.
I looked closer, and staring me back in the face were the words “school shooting.”
But this particular act of aggression struck close to home. The phenomenon of school shootings became all too real for me when I saw on the national news, “School shooting in Grundy, Va.”
The shooting occurred at the Appalachian School of Law about mid-afternoon on Wednesday. Six people were shot and three were killed, including L. Anthony Sutin, dean of the law school.
Grundy, a small town nestled in the Appalachians mountains, is literally in my backyard. I can remember going there in high school to watch football games and to play basketball.
With a traveling distance of less than 30 minutes from my hometown of Pound, Va., to Grundy the reality of this type of senseless violence came a little too close.
I guess I naively believed the isolation of my mountain home was a shelter from the reality of this violence.
Even though I now live in Greenville in the bucolic Mississippi Delta, Pound will always be my home and I will forever be an Appalachian.
We are a close-knit group of people who have been stereotyped over the years by the news media as violent and uneducated.
Make no mistake, this area of the nation which I called home is certainly no backwater.
But it wasn’t one of us who committed this unspeakable deed. It wasn’t an Appalachian who picked up the gun and started randomly shooting people because of a bad grade.
A foreign exchange student, reportedly a Nigerian, committed these horrible murders.
Anchorman Shepherd Smith of the Fox News Channel said surely this event would have an impact on such a small community.
It is true, this event will affect Grundy.
In a town like Grundy, any loss of life is a huge deal because everyone knows each other well. It’s family, so to speak.
However, a great loss of life is something we’ve been through many times before.
Many men have died a mile or more back in a mountain. Coal mine explosions or roof cave-ins have claimed the lives of men, sometimes 10 or more at a time. So, death and tragedy is not alien to us.
And the community displays that human resiliency and always manages to come together to help out their family, neighbors and friends.
I know losing men in a coal mine shaft isn’t the same as violence, but we’ve had our share of that as well. Union violence plagued the Appalachians for years. Nonetheless, violence toward each other is not prevalent in our small close-knit communities.
Still, this is different. As a human being, I feel for the families of the victims of these murders.
As an Appalachian, my heart goes out to them even more. I know the community will rebound, pull together and get through this tragedy.
We Appalachians are a strong and proud people who, despite stereotypes, have learned to face adversity head on, and overcome it.
To the victims of this shooting and to the people of Grundy and its surrounding communities; God bless you. Even though this Appalachian woman is nearly a thousand miles away, she is with you in spirit.