Day 2: Opening statements begin in Virginia Tech shootings lawsuit

The Commonwealth of Virginia is defending it's actions the morning of April 16, 2007, before Seung-Hui Cho shot and killed 30 people, and then himself, inside Norris Hall.  Hours before that shooting, Cho killed two people inside a campus dorm room.

In opening statements Tuesday, defense attorneys argued that Virginia Tech officials acted appropriately given the information they knew at the time.  Attorneys said the initial investigation into the dorm room killing at West Ambler Johnston Hall lead police to believe the crime was a domestic case, with specifically targeted victims.

Defense attorneys argued it's easy to look back and point out errors and mistakes, but at the time police had no evidence that pointed to the gunman, Seung-Hui Cho, coming back to campus and killing 30 more people at random.

'If he was the kind of killer looking for targets of opportunity, that dorm is full of them," Assistant Attorney General Peter Messitt argued about police's evidence of a targeted-domestic crime. "He threatened no one. He's so unremarkable that he came into the dorm, shot two people, left the dorm, and no body saw him." 

Defense attorney Messitt acknowleged that the police's evidence eventually turned out to be wrong, but defended the university's actions of waiting nearly two hours to alert students to the shooting in the dorm, since their appeared to be no more danger from the shooter.

Attorneys even pointed out that University President Charles Steger's wife and son were on campus on the morning of the shootings, April 16, 2007.  If Steger had thought there was a danger, he likely would have alerted them, which he did not.

Defense lawyers said police quickly developed a "person of interest" in the dorm shooting.  Police focused their attention on Karl Thornhill, the boyfriend of the first student killed in the dorm room, Emily Hilscher.

Thornhill testified Tuesday about how he found out his girlfriend was shot, how police tracked him down and arrested him, and about the police investigation. 

Emily Hilscher's former roommate, Heather Haugh, also testified Tuesday.  Haugh told juror's she was the one to tell police about Thornhill, and show police Facebook pictures of Thornhill holding a gun.

"I said he wasn't a violent person and he wouldn't do something like that," testified Haugh. "But I think they just kind of got excited they had a lead and so they were like 'We have to go find him, go find him."

Police found Thornhill, who left class at Radford University when he heard about the shooting in his girlfriend's room, and quickly realized he was not the shooter.  Police cleared him as a suspect about 30 minutes before Cho opened fire inside Norris Hall. 

Witness testimony will continue Wednesday. The trial should go through the rest of the week.

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In their opening statement, lawyers for two families suing the state painted Virginia Tech police as inexperienced and university administrators as slow-moving and unclear.

After a jury of 4 men and 5 women were seated Tuesday, lawyers for the families of Erin Peterson and Julia Pryde began their opening statement.  They walked the jurors through their version of the events of April 16, 2007. They also showed jurors pictures of the initial crime scene in West Ambler Johnston Hall, including bloody footprints leaving the room where Emily Hilscher and Ryan Clark were murdered.

Lawyers argued that Virginia Tech police were unprepared and inexperienced to deal with the initial double murder in West Ambler Johnston Hall.  Police Chief Wendell Flinchum and the lead investigator assigned to the case had never worked a homicide.  Lawyers for the families argued investigators ignored evidence, didn't thoroughly canvass the building and didn't contact RadfordUniversity police even though they determined a person of interest in the murders was a Radford University student. 

The lawyers representing the Peterson and Pryde families also argued that Virginia Tech was slow to issue a campus warning, and later made incorrect statements about what was eventually issued.  The bodies of Emliy Hilscher and Ryan Clark were found around 7:25 a.m.  A campus wide alert describing a "shooting incident" was sent at 9:26.  Lawyers noted two other messages were sent before that time: One to members of the Board of Visitors saying two students had been shot and another to the governor's office at 8:45.  The message to the governor's office said "Not releasable yet: 1 dead, 1 wounded. Gunman on the loose."  At 9:42, Seung-Hui Cho began shooting more than 30 people inside Norris Hall.

Lawyers for the families suggested Peterson and Pryde would have followed emergency instructions, had they been released earlier.  During the William Morva incident in August 2006, Virginia Tech issued a campus-wide alert about an hour after Morva murdered a Montgomery Countysheriff's deputy near campus.  That was Erin Peterson's first full day on the Virginia Tech campus.  When she received the alert, she called her father who instructed her to stay in her dorm room and lock the door.  Julia Pryde also received the same notice and stayed away from the campus that day.  The parents of the two girls became emotional when jurors were shown photos of the young women.

Plaintiff lawyers also say Virginia Tech misled the public after the shootings.  On the evening of April 16th, Virginia Tech President Charles Steger read a timeline of events at a news conference.  The timeline was prepared by university vice-president Larry Hincker.   Lawyers say the timeline had a number of inaccuracies:  It states that police identified a person of interest at 7:30 a.m. even though records show that did not happen until 8:16.  It also referred to early discussion of a "homicide investigation" even though the warning that went out to the university described only a "shooting incident."

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