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A day later, the timeline of the killing was laid out. When the first two dormitory deaths were discovered at 7:15am, campus police insisted that they secured that building, CBS' Sharyn Alfonsi reported. However she checked with a student resident. She "told a different story," recounting that she left unobstructed an hour later. "The dorm was not secure. The gunman was on the loose," Alfonsi concluded.
CBS' Bob Orr consulted his unidentified sources. They told him that the student gunman returned to his own dormitory next door after his first two killings. There he left a "rambling but threatening note" in which "he seemed to blame others for his perceived problems." His roommate Karan Grewal described the gunman just two hours before the killing started: he had "no expression on his face. He did not seem angry or sad or anything."
Questions persist about the decision made by campus security to delay until 9:26am its e-mail notification to students about the two previous dormitory deaths. NBC's in-house security consultant Michael Sheehan told Lisa Myers that the two-hour delay was "inexplicable" and "a very grave mistake." He declared: "They should have ramped up the security significantly more than they did" with an "aggressive, robust law enforcement presence throughout the campus."
The eventual carnage occurred at 9:45am in the classrooms of the academic building named Norris Hall, ten minutes' walk from the first death scene. Students in a German class and an engineering class were wiped out. A second e-mail notification was sent out promptly at 9:50am. "By then it was too late," NBC's Myers pointed out.
ABC's anchor Charles Gibson sat down with students who were next door in Norris Hall in a ten-person mathematics class. They recounted how they dodged death by barricading themselves inside, staying silent for 40 minutes: "Sure enough, two seconds after we threw that table against the door he was at our handle trying to get in, pushing against the door. Then he started firing bullets against the door. We were lying on the ground," said one. "You could feel the bullets. You could feel the vibrations of each gun shot," said another. "The only silence you heard the entire time throughout the shooting was when he had to reload."
The wounded are recovering at a nearby hospital. ABC's Muir quoted student Garrett Evans: "One of the worst things a human being could smell is death. You are in a room, not really large. It has to hold about 30 people. And you have all that carnage laying on the ground."
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