Local Virginia Tech Alums React to School Massacre

    A campus massacre at Virginia Tech earlier today. A gunman killed 32 people at the campus today, before turning the gun on himself. The Chicago Sun Times is reporting the gunman is a Chinese nationalist who came to the US on a student visa last year. The shootings happened in a school building and dorms. It's the deadliest mass shooting in this country.

    For two Virginia Tech alums, now at the U of I, it's a nightmare that hit way too close to home. For many, they're looking for answers they can't get. " It's hard to think of an explanation that makes sense," says alum Cameron Speir.
  P.H.D student Joanna Ganning does a quick check of the news online everyday,  but today's headlines kept her glued for hours. " It's been frantic all day, just trying to get a hold of people and who's heard what." Clicking her mouse, and hitting refresh on websites like MSNBC and CNN, it seems like Ganning can't hit them often enough. With every click, the news got worse for the 2005 Virginia Tech graduate. " As I kept reading, it kept unfolding, and I realized how serious this was.
    Ganning was so emotional, she called her old pastor in Blacksburg, Virginia, where the shootings happened.  " I said I don't know  why I called you, I needed to call someone."
     Like Ganning, Speir reached back to a place he once called home. " I'm a little bit concerned, I sent an email to a couple of professors, down there, checking in on them, making sure they're safe." Now both fear, their school will be tainted by these shootings forever. "You fear that a place you care about that is marked by that image," Ganning sadly says.