Appalachian School of Law Shootings

Associated Press Online

Ted Besen says he had yearned to become a defense attorney, but changed his mind in the wake of the slayings of the dean, a professor and another student at the Appalachian School of Law.

“I don’t ever want to defend someone like him,” Besen said.

The former Marine and police officer was among several students who tackled former classmate Peter Odighizuwa on the school’s front lawn after last week’s shootings.

When classes resume Wednesday at the school, Besen, 37, and others said they’ll return with mixed emotions.

“You just feel violated somehow,” Besen said Tuesday at a nearby restaurant.

“I’ve been having bad dreams,” said 42-year-old Mary Kilpatrick. “I guess there’s no more security in law schools than there is any other place.”

Kilpatrick said she and about 20 other students spent most of Monday in the school lounge, scrubbing blood stains from the rug and rearranging furniture.

“It’s therapeutic being back here; it keeps my mind off of things,” Kilpatrick said. v

Police say Odighizuwa shot Dean L. Anthony Sutin and Professor Thomas Blackwell in their offices last Wednesday, then opened fire in the school lounge, killing student Angela Dales and injuring three others.

Odighizuwa, 43, had recently learned he’d flunked out for the second time. He’s charged with three counts of capital murder, three counts of attempted capital murder and six weapons charges. Prosecutors say they will seek the death penalty.

“We’re going to have an unofficial class reunion the day he gets the chair,” said Matthew Harvey, who spent the week driving between memorial services with other students.

The school reopened Tuesday, holding a two-hour counseling session and discussing the class schedule for the rest of the semester.

Outside, faculty and students wrote good-bye messages in memorial books that will be given to victims’ families.

“I keep expecting Dean Sutin to come back,” said 22-year-old Melanie Page. “I just miss them all so much.”

Chicago Tribune

Two students wounded in a shooting rampage at the Appalachian School of Law last Wednesday have been discharged from a hospital.

On Sunday, Rebecca Brown, 38, and Martha Madeline Short, 37, left the Wellmont Holston Valley Medical Center in Kingsport, Tenn., said a hospital spokeswoman. A third student, Stacey Beans, 22, was upgraded to good condition from fair.

The school’s dean, L. Anthony Sutin, professor Thomas Blackwell and student Angela Dales, 33, were slain in the spree.

Peter Odighizuwa, 43, has been charged with murder and attempted murder. He had recently flunked out of the law school, police said.

The Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN)

ABROAD

Two shooting victims released from hospital

GRUNDY, Va. - Two students wounded in a shooting rampage at the Appalachian School of Law last week have been released from a hospital.

Rebecca Brown, 38, and Martha Madeline Short, 37, were discharged Sunday from Wellmont Holston Valley Medical Center in Kingsport, Tenn., said hospital spokesman Amy Stevens.

A third student, Stacey Beans, 22, was upgraded from fair to good condition.

The school’s dean, L. Anthony Sutin, professor Thomas Blackwell and student Angela Dales, 33, were slain in the spree.

Student Peter Odighizuwa, 43, has been charged with murder and attempted murder.

Apt. fire kills woman, injures 8 firefighters

CHICAGO - A fire sent flames shooting out windows of a high-rise apartment building in Chicago early Monday, killing one woman and injuring eight firefighters.

The cause of the fire on the 14th floor of the 47-floor building was not immediately determined, Fire Department spokesman Patrick Howe said.

The victim was a woman in her 50s, the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office said. Investigators were still working to identify her.

Three firefighters were treated in a hospital for burns and upgraded to fair condition Monday afternoon, a Fire Department spokesman said. Five others were treated and released, he said.

SNAPSHOTS

U.S. warplanes struck an anti-aircraft artillery site in southern Iraq Monday in response to “hostile Iraqi threats” against pilots and aircrews patrolling the skies over the region, American defense officials reported Monday. The raid amounted to another in a long series of low-level skirmishes with Iraqi forces that have taken place since 1992, when the United States established “no-fly” zones over northern and southern Iraq after the Persian Gulf War.

A major electricity blackout hit at least five Brazilian states Monday, hampering commerce and industry in six key cities for more than two hours. A transmission line failure at the country’s Itaipu hydroelectric dam was to blame; the facility is the largest single source of power in Brazil.

Newsday (New York)

Wounded Students Improve

Two students wounded last week in a shooting rampage at the Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, Va., have been released from a hospital.

Rebecca Brown, 38, and Martha Madeline Short, 37, were discharged Sunday from Wellmont Holston Valley Medical Center in Kingsport, Tenn., said hospital spokeswoman Amy Stevens. A third student, Stacey Beans, 22, was upgraded from fair to good condition.

The school’s dean, L. Anthony Sutin, Professor Thomas Blackwell and student Angela Dales, 33, were slain. Student Peter Odighizuwa, 43, has been charged with murder and attempted murder. Police said he had recently flunked out of school.

11 Slain in Jammu-Kashmir

Eleven members of a Muslim family, including eight children, were killed when gunmen barged into their house in India’s rebellion-torn Jammu and Kashmir state yesterday and opened fire, police said.

Though police initially blamed militants fighting Indian rule in India’s only Muslim-majority state, the chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir said the deaths in Poonch district were the result of a local feud.

Three people were arrested on the basis of information provided by local people, a Jammu police official said. They implicated a former police officer who had deserted a year ago.

None of the guerrilla groups fighting Indian rule in Jammu and Kashmir claimed responsibility for the attack.

Richmond Times Dispatch (Virginia)

Charlotte Varney, the secretary of Buchanan First Presbyterian Church, is not a member of the church. Articles about the shooting at the Appalachian School of Law, which appeared Friday and Sunday, indicated she was.

* * *

A headline on a story on farm policy in yesterday’s Metro Business section misspelled the word sowing.

St. Petersburg Times (Florida)

Two students wounded in a shooting rampage at Appalachian School of Law last week have been released from a hospital.

Rebecca Brown, 38, and Martha Madeline Short, 37, were discharged Sunday from Wellmont Holston Valley Medical Center in Kingsport, Tenn., said hospital spokeswoman Amy Stevens.

A third student, Stacey Beans, 22, was upgraded from fair to good condition.

Stevens said all three were expected to make a full recovery.

The school’s dean, L. Anthony Sutin, professor Thomas Blackwell and student Angela Dales, 33, were slain in the spree.

Student Peter Odighizuwa, 43, has been charged with murder and attempted murder. Police said he had recently flunked out of school.

The Washington Times

MENINGITIS KILLS PRISON INMATE

RICHMOND - A Lunenburg Correctional Center inmate died from bacterial meningitis two days after he was scheduled to be paroled, the Department of Corrections announced yesterday.

James Ball, 45, of Hampton died last Thursday, spokesman Larry Traylor said.

No one else at the 1,100-inmate prison near Victoria has come down with symptoms, Mr. Traylor said. All inmates and staff at the prison who came into contact with Ball were given Cipro, a powerful antibiotic.

Ball became so ill that he was sent to a hospital in South Hill on Jan. 3 and then transferred to the Medical College of Virginia Hospitals in Richmond later that day, he said.

Ball had been in prison off and on since 1991 for crimes including maiming, use of a firearm in a felony, attempted arson and parole violations, Mr. Traylor said. He was to have been paroled Jan. 15.

POLICE: FIRE THAT CAUSED DEATH WAS ACCIDENTAL

MCLEAN - The fire that killed a man at a McLean home appears to have been an accident, Fairfax County police said.

A man checking on the welfare of his 32-year-old son at 1612 Simmons Drive on Sunday found a body inside the residence. Police said the fire might have been caused by a space heater.

The body still has not been identified, and the cause of death remains unknown. Police said an autopsy will be performed.

NO BOND FOR MAN HELD IN SHOOTING AT MOTEL

ARLINGTON - A Marine Corps sergeant from Fort Knox, Ky., has been arrested and charged in the fatal shootings of his wife, his 5-year-old daughter and his wife’s friend, police said yesterday.

Arlington County police Sgt. Jim Daly said a motel guest heard a woman scream Sunday night at the Cherry Blossom TraveLodge. Motel workers called police, and officers who responded at 8:15 p.m. found one woman dead in one room and another woman and the girl with gunshot wounds in another room, Daly said.

The second woman was pronounced dead at Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington, and the girl was transported to Washington Hospital Center, where she was pronounced dead shortly after arrival, Sgt. Daly said.

Killed in the shooting were the man’s wife, Maya Lajuan Davidson Cooper, 22; Marie Gault, 20; and Desiree Cooper, 5. All three were from Arlington. It is not clear which woman was in which room.

Sgt. Zachary Cooper Sr. of Fort Knox, Ky., was charged with one count of murder and is being held without bond in the Arlington County Detention Center. The investigation is continuing.

Investigators did not have a motive for the shooting.

The three slayings were more than Arlington had in all of 2001, when the county had two homicides, Sgt. Daly said.

It was the second triple homicide in the history of the county. The first was in 1995, Sgt. Daly said.

TWO RAMPAGE SURVIVORS RELEASED FROM HOSPITAL

GRUNDY - Two students wounded in last week’s shooting rampage at the Appalachian School of Law have been released from a hospital.

Rebecca Brown, 38, of Roanoke and Martha Madeline Short, 37, of Clintwood were discharged Sunday from Wellmont Holston Valley Medical Center in Kingsport, Tenn., according to a hospital spokeswoman.

A third student, Stacey Beans, 22, of Paducah, Ky., was upgraded from fair to good condition, she said. All three were expected to make a full recovery, she said.

The school’s dean, L. Anthony Sutin, professor Thomas Blackwell and student Angela Dales were slain in the shooting spree.

Dismissed student Peter Odighizuwa, 43, a native of Nigeria, is charged with three counts of capital murder, three counts of attempted capital murder and six weapons counts in the shootings. Police said Mr. Odighizuwa recently had flunked out of school.

The private law school, which opened five years ago in a renovated junior high school, has an enrollment of about 200 students.

The Associated Press State & Local Wire

Ted Besen says he had yearned to become a defense attorney, but changed his mind in the wake of the slayings of the dean, a professor and another student at the Appalachian School of Law.

“I don’t ever want to defend someone like him,” Besen said.

The former Marine and police officer was among several students who tackled former classmate Peter Odighizuwa on the school’s front lawn after last week’s shootings.

When classes resume Wednesday at the school, Besen, 37, and others said they’ll return with mixed emotions.

“You just feel violated somehow,” Besen said Tuesday at a nearby restaurant.

“I’ve been having bad dreams,” said 42-year-old Mary Kilpatrick. “I guess there’s no more security in law schools than there is any other place.”

Kilpatrick said she and about 20 other students spent most of Monday in the school lounge, scrubbing blood stains from the rug and rearranging furniture.

“It’s therapeutic being back here; it keeps my mind off of things,” Kilpatrick said.

“We’re going to have an unofficial class reunion the day he gets the chair,” said Matthew Harvey, who spent the week driving between memorial services with other students.

The school reopened Tuesday, holding a two-hour counseling session and discussing the class schedule for the rest of the semester.

Outside, faculty and students wrote good-bye messages in memorial books that will be given to victims’ families.

“I keep expecting Dean Sutin to come back,” said 22-year-old Melanie Page. “I just miss them all so much.”

Associated Press Online

Two students wounded in a shooting rampage at the Appalachian School of Law last week have been released from a hospital.

Rebecca Brown, 38, and Martha Madeline Short, 37, were discharged Sunday from Wellmont Holston Valley Medical Center in Kingsport, Tenn., said hospital spokeswoman Amy Stevens.

A third student, Stacey Beans, 22, was upgraded from fair to good condition.

Stevens said all three were expected to make a full recovery.

The school’s dean, L. Anthony Sutin, Professor Thomas Blackwell and student Angela Dales, 33, were slain in the spree.

Student Peter Odighizuwa, 43, has been charged with murder and attempted murder. Police said he had recently flunked out of school.

The Associated Press

It seemed like a risky proposition: building a law school in a small struggling coal town isolated by the rugged Appalachian Mountains.

But with area mines closing and the young moving away to find work, town officials pushed ahead, opening the Appalachian School of Law in 1997 inside an old brick school house.

“We needed this, anything that could help,” said W.H. Trivett, 77, mayor of the blue-collar town of about 1,100.

It took time for the new students to gain acceptance in the close-knit community where many residents’ families had lived for generations.

“We had to get used to people from different cultures living here - and they had to get used to us,” said Richie Mullins, 35, who sells law school text books out of his bicycle store on Main Street.

But any lingering doubts students and faculty may have had about their neighbors’ feelings disappeared last week as the town responded after a disgruntled former student allegedly walked into the school and shot to death the dean, a professor and a student.

In the days that followed, signs of support appeared throughout Grundy.

“ASL our thoughts and prayers are with you,” read a banner in the parking lot of Rife’s TV.

A grocery in nearby Vansant donated ham biscuits, cookies and soda pop to the Baptist church for a memorial service.

Loweda Gillespie, 61, tied yellow ribbons around store fronts, telephone poles and trees.

“We wanted to let them know we’re family,” Gillespie said.

Dean L. Anthony Sutin, 42, and Professor Tom Blackwell, 41, were slain in their offices Wednesday. Law student Angela Dales, 33, died later at the hospital. Three other students were wounded.

The gunfire sent terrified students running from the building before classmates tackled the alleged shooter. Peter Odighizuwa, 43, who had been dismissed from the school because of failing grades, is charged with three counts of capital murder, three counts of attempted capital murder and six weapons charges. The prosecutor said she will seek the death penalty.

Residents attended memorial services throughout the week, placing flowers on the school’s concrete sign as victims’ families and friends wept in small, shivering circles.

“It’s so heartwarming to see this,” school president Lucius Ellsworth said Saturday. “There’s no doubt that out of this tragedy, this community has united.”

For decades, officials wanted to build a law school in southwest Virginia to create jobs and provide a legal resource for the remote mountain area.

“In all rural areas, there is a real lack of legal education,” said Ellsworth, a former education official in Tennessee and vice chancellor of Clinch Valley College in Wise. Before the law school came to Grundy, there was no other law school within a three-hour drive.

The Appalachian School of Law now has about 200 students. The American Bar Association granted it provisional accreditation last year. And everyone at the school - students and faculty alike - is required to support the town with 25 hours of community service per term.

Students, many of whom are older and looking for a second career, tutor Grundy school children.

“These kids, the way they’re allowed to work with the public, I’m sure they’re getting a better education than they could in other places,” Trivett said.

Among the faculty, Blackwell was one of the most involved. His children regularly helped out at the Mountain Mission School, a local agency for orphans and children of extreme poverty. He and his wife, Lisa, sang in a church choir, and he was on a committee to find a new pastor.

“Y’all have become our family,” Lisa Blackwell said at a memorial service for her husband Friday. “We have more love here than we could possibly have asked for.”

Blackwell’s funeral was planned for Monday in Dallas, where the family lived before moving to Grundy. A private memorial service for Sutin was held Sunday at the local high school.

“He came to Grundy because he thought he could use his talents to help people in Appalachia, and to help boost the economy of a small coal town,” said Kent Markus, Sutin’s former Harvard Law School roommate and one of about 500 people who attended the service. “He was trying to help the sons and grandsons of coal miners.”

At the law school, classes were expected to resume Tuesday. The faculty shuffled around schedules to cover Blackwell’s classes, and Paul Lund, who has been assistant dean, was appointed to fill Sutin’s role until a new dean can be hired.

“As horrific as this has been, I’m certain the institution will be stronger,” Ellsworth said.