On Thursday, December 8, Virginia Tech University (VTU) experienced their second on-campus shooting. While it wasn’t quite as extreme as the massacre seen in 2007, students were asked to go on lockdown in response to the shooter.

CNN reports that the craze began around noon that Thursday, when Truett Ashley, 22 and part-time student of Radford University (15 miles from VTU), walked into a local real estate office with a gun, insisting that someone hand over the keys of a nearby Mercedes SUV.
After driving away with the Mercedes, he headed down the road towards a nearby intersection, where campus police officer Deriek Crouse had just pulled a car over. Ashley fired at Crouse, killing him, and driving off to an on-campus parking lot about a quarter mile away.
Minutes later, police followed Ashley, and found him dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in the middle of this parking lot.

This horrible scene brought back memories of the 2007 shooting for several people at VTU. Final exams that were supposed to begin the following Friday were pushed back. While students are no longer on lockdown, life at VTU will be different for a little while. Hopes are that the students of Virginia Tech University can feel safe once again and return to their studies before winter break.