Deadliest school shooting in U.S. history

UPDATE (4/17, 2AM): 33 deaths confirmed by Virginia Tech University.

Video shot by student, Jamal Albarghouti, of shots being fired on campus.

UPDATE (6PM): The Collegiate Times has very quick updates of information as they happen.

Photo credit: Alan Kim, The Roanoke Times via Associated Press

This morning, a lone gunman opened fire at two separate buildings at Virginia Tech, leaving at least 22 people dead (as of the time of this post).

The university was struck today with a tragedy of monumental proportions. There were two shootings on campus. In each case, there were fatalities. The university is shocked and horrified that this would befall our campus. I want to extend my deepest, sincerest and most profound sympathies to the families of these victims which include students There are 22 confirmed deaths.

The Virginia Tech website has been swamped with request for information. It’s been up and down all morning. The campus alert status page is reachable but very slow. Virginia Tech President Charles Steger has issued a podcast for updates in case the school’s website becomes unreachable.

Users and readers on Wikipedia have been very busy updating and editing the page for the Virginia Tech massacre.

I really don’t understand why Fox News is reporting that 32 people have been killed when the rest of the mainstream media is reporting numbers much lower. Obviously, the real numbers won’t be known for a while (ABC News is reporting 29 dead and affiliates of CBS News are reporting 30 killed), but still, how can the numbers for major news sources be so different? Don’t they all generally get their information from the same sources?

Some photos are starting to pop up on Flickr’s search as well. Flickr user, and1headache has some photos of the police scene at the school.