In deciding the last pending lawsuit stemming from the killings of more than 30 students by a crazy gunman the jurors held that the authorities were negligent in not issuing proper warning and campus-wide alert in time. While the first two murders happened close to 7 am, it took the authorities another 2 and half hours to issue a campus-wide alert. In the time between the authorities were convinced that the two murders were ‘domestic violence’ and posed no threat to the general campus.
The parents of two murdered students stayed vigilant over the fate of their lawsuit for the last 5 years, and remarked that their slain daughters would have expected this persistence from their parents. The families of both students earlier rejected their share of a $11 million settlement contending that justice for their slain daughters were what they were looking for, not money.
The court vindicated their faith by forcing the Virginia Tech authorities to come out with the truth, which may not have happened if the plaintiffs in the case had accepted the earlier settlement by the school. However, the results of the civil lawsuit are scoffed at by the authorities.
Virginia Tech spokesman, Mark Owczarski said, “We are disappointed with today’s decision and stand by our long-held position that the administration and law enforcement at Virginia Tech did their absolute best with the information available on April 16, 2007.” Mr. Owczarski also informed the media that the school would review the case with the Attorney General before further action.
Facts of the case show that while two deaths occurred at around 7 am on the fateful day, the School authorities, knowing that the gunman was still to be apprehended, sent out a casual email mentioning that two shooting incidents had occurred, without pointing out to students that the gunman was still at large.
Tech officials woke up to the situation and sent out a mass email with specific warning 10 minutes after the gunman Cho had initiated his first round of mass slaughter within classrooms. There was no way the victims could have read that email – they were either dead or cowering behind brief barricades trying to protect their lives.
The plaintiffs also alleged that the school administrators had tried to cover up their missteps by fabricating official timelines to reduce the amount of their negligence. The Virginia Tech administrators said the mistakes in timelines that had been caught, and that if interpreted properly might lead to the conclusion that the authorities had acted with greater responsibility than interpreted from the true timeline, were just mistakes caused in the fog of a horrific tragedy. The authorities however did not comment as to how each ‘mistake’ they committed in reporting the timeline of events helped to cover up their negligence like a rigged taxi meter that makes mistakes only to increase the fare and never to decrease it.
The parents of the two slain students Peterson and Pryde felt vindicated though not jubiliant.
Harry Pryde told the media, “We were looking for truth for a long time … we persevered and we got some truth today.”
Celeste Peterson, the parent of one of the slain students said “When you know that something is right you’re not deterred from your course … We wanted the truth from the very beginning and we got it.”
