Richmond Times-Dispatch
Editor’s note: Chase Damiano, a 2006 Atlee High School graduate and Virginia Tech freshman, was in French class in Holden Hall on Monday morning when he and classmates got word of the shootings.
BLACKSBURG, VA. - Holden Hall is the other wing of the building that houses Norris Hall, where 30 students and faculty members were killed.
Damiano shared with The Times-Dispatch what happened, in his own words:
9:50 A.M.
We started hearing sirens outside of our building. We took it as nothing, [because] we hear police sirens around campus all the time. It was just slightly strange that we heard them during the day. Soon, the 13 of us heard an ambulance in front of our building. We took it as another bomb threat -- we had been getting bomb threats in April that ended up being hoaxes.
We started getting concerned when the sirens increased in volume. The professor looked out the window with us, and we saw police cars and ambulances out on the Drillfield. Students were walking away from our building. Police officers were assembling on the sidewalk. Large black vans appeared.
Two women barged into our classroom. “There was a shooting this morning at West Ambler Johnston. The shooter has gone into Norris and we are locking your door. Stay inside.” They then left.
Norris Hall. The hall connected to Holden Hall, where I was. The two halls are in the same building.
We were in danger.
Outside, students fled with hands on their heads; one girl even fell and hit her head on the sidewalk. All in fear of some alleged killer.
[Our French instructor] told us to close the windows . . . [and] stay away from the windows and the door. . . . We played a conjugation game in French so our minds could be at ease from the situation. It didn’t help . . .
Gunshots were fired, and we started to panic. We stopped playing our game and tried to figure out how to get the news on the projector. The main TV in the classroom didn’t work, but the projector, we knew, had cable connected to it. After some struggle, we pulled up CNN, Fox and the local news in Blacksburg.
They all said the same thing at this point: one student dead, another person wounded.
We shut off the lights and moved tables and chairs away from the “safest” corner in the room. We gathered in this corner and [watched] the news.
The professor suggested that we construct a barricade in front of the door, because the door lock wasn’t that strong -- it’s an old building. We moved our tables in front of the door in a line so that it touched the other wall opposite of the door. . . .
We started calling our friends to collect some news. We had no computer in the classroom. . . . We had no access to the outside except for our cell phones. Unfortunately, most students at Virginia Tech are Verizon users, so the lines were all swamped. Only T-Mobile and Cingular users had good service. . . . We all called our families, friends and loved ones.
Eight casualties now.
My phone received messages both voice-mail and text messages but I couldn’t respond to them easily. I pushed to get through to Stephanie and my mother, just to tell them that I was safe and that I loved them. . . .
This is when we received a knock at the door. . . . He said it was the sheriff’s department. We took down our barricade and opened the door. He told us to stay inside and stay away from the windows. He left, and we rebuilt our barricade and returned to our corner. We started watching a French movie while everyone called people. . . . No one paid attention to the movie. We didn’t want the movie; we wanted the news. We wanted to know what we had going on outside . . .
About 22 victims.
We heard word of people jumping out of Norris Hall. There were loudspeakers outside, telling us to stay inside with the door locked and not to go outside for any reason. . . . Eventually, we heard activity in the corridor outside of our door. We quieted our voices and listened on. We heard shuffling of feet. Running. Loud stomps. A lot of panicked movement . . .
We opened our door and saw two women telling us to get ready to run. We packed up our things quickly and readied ourselves. Our only objective was to get out of Holden Hall as quickly as possible. We said our goodbyes to each other and ran down the stairs, turning the corners at high speeds . . .
I got back to my dorm, and everyone was happy that I was safe. My French class usually gets out at 9:55 a.m. I did not leave the building until noon about two hours of hiding. Many people called to make sure I was safe.
Nothing good came out of this event at all.
It is unbelievable to think that people do this to fellow students. Thank God that my friends are OK.
This day, the 16th of April, I will never forget.