Va. Tech president defends himself by Delia Cruceru

Charles Steger, the president of Virginia Tech refused to resign despite the amount of criticism that came from the victims relatives. He said that the university did everything it could in response to the nation's deadliest school shooting. "I believe that based on what we knew at the time we did the right things, quite honestly," he said. A state panel concludes that lives could have been saved if alerts had been sent out earlier and classes canceled after two people were killed, but Charles Steger rejected that. He suggested that the death toll might have risen above 33 if police and school officials had done things differently on that deadly day of April 16. On that day, after the first two murders were committed, Cho had time to live the dorms, mail a videotaped confession and manifesto to NBC News, then return to campus and make his way to Norris Hall, because the administration of the university sent the e-mail alert after two hours. According to Steger during those two hours, the administrators considered how to deal with the first burst of gunfire. At that time only two administrators could have sent the e-mail alert, an the message had to be formulated by the by the Policy Group, a group of nine people chaired by Steger. The assembling of the group took almost half an hour. "The alert should have been issued and classes should have been closed," panel Chairman Gerald Massengill said Thursday.

related story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070830/ap_on_re_us/virginia_tech_investigation;_ylt=ArJOH6H7yE4YnZ1IleAgWh.s0NUE

by Delia Cruceru for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

PocketNews is a new real-time news broadcaster delivering the latest and hottest news right to your pocket ! With global clients who want to be kept up to date, PocketNews is everyone's way of keeping in touch with the World.