Shooting at Virginia Tech has Eleanor Roosevelt Graduate on Lockdown

Eleanor Roosevelt High School graduate student Darius Miles is on lockdown at Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg, Virginia, following the shooting of a police officer and someone in the campus parking lot Thursday afternoon.

“We’re all on lockdown,” Miles a freshman architecture major reported. 

Police agencies including the Virginia State Police, FBI agents and the Agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives as well as other local Virginia law enfocement agencies responded to a call about a shooting on campus Thursday afternoon. Police have said that two people were shot dead.

Miles said he was headed out to get something to eat at around 11 a.m. when he got an alert telling him, “Stay in your room. There is a gunman. Don’t go out.”

He hasn’t had anything to eat all day and has nothing to eat in his room, but he’s staying safe.

“There’s a lot of people here that are hungry,” he said, making reference to remarks from friends that are telling him, “I’m just so hungry. We’ve been on lockdown so long.”

For his part, Miles said, he has been hungry before, so he knows how to deal with it and is studying for finals. 

“We don’t know why he did it” Miles said of the shooter. He said that the students are supporting each other through this. 

“A lot of people have that kind of community feel since this has happened before,” Miles said, referencing the April 2007 shooting at Virginia Tech that left 33 people including the gunman, Seung-hui Cho dead. 

Miles doesn’t know when he’ll get to eat but he’s staying put until the university informs him it's safe to leave.

“For right now, stay in your room, stay safe, don’t come out,” he said.