In the chaotic minutes after a fatal shooting yesterday, Virginia Tech officials were forced to test emergency procedures put in place after the 2007 campus rampage that resulted in 33 deaths, the Christian Science Monitor reports. Officials used Twitter to send a campus lockdown notice to students seven minutes after the 12:30 p.m. shooting of a campus police officer, who was making a routine traffic stop. The school said the gunman, who approached the officer on foot, fled on foot.
Soon after the shooting, a second person believed to be the gunman was found dead of a gunshot wound in another campus parking lot with the weapon nearby. In the April 2007 massacre, Virginia Tech officials were criticized and fined for waiting two hours after the first bullets were fired before issuing a campus alert. Virginia Tech now is appealing a $55,000 fine imposed by the U.S. Department of Education for violating the rules of an emergency notification policy in the 2007 shooting.