Lockdown Lifted at Virginia Tech After Shooting

Virginia Tech officials said on the school's website that a weapon was recovered near a second body found in a parking lot on campus. Virginia Tech is the site of a 2007 shooting in which 32 people were killed.

UPDATE:The gunman who shot and killed a Virginia Tech police officer and father of five is thought to have killed himself in a parking lot about a half mile away, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell told reporters early on Friday. According to news reports, the state police told reporters that the gun that killed the officer was the same one that killed the man found in the parking lot. "We have recovered clothing items that would lead us to believe that he would be one and the same," said Maj. Rick Jenkins, deputy director of the Virginia State Police’s bureau of investigation, according to the New York Times. He added, however, "We are not in a situation to say that definitively at this point." ---------------------------------------------------------------------

Virginia Tech lifted its campus lockdown late on Thursday following an intense search for a gunman after two people -- a campus police officer and an unidentified male -- were shot and killed.

Virginia Tech is also the scene of a 2007 massacre in which 32 people died.

According to the college's website there is "no longer an active threat or need to secure in place. Resume normal activities."

BLOG: Thoughts on Another VT Shooting

As the story broke, Collegiate Times, a student newspaper, said on its Twitter account that one person had been killed. It also tweeted a photograph of a parking lot with what appeared to be a shrouded body on the ground, surrounded by police tape.

Minutes earlier, Virginia Tech declared "an active campus alert... Everyone should seek shelter or stay where you are. Blacksburg Transit service is suspended until the alert is lifted."

The shooting took place around noon after a campus police officer made "a routine traffic stop" in a parking lot. During the stop, the officer was shot and killed, said the spokesman, Mark Owczarski, director of news and information, according to the New York Times.

"Witnesses reported seeing the suspect running toward a different parking lot, called the Cage, near Duck Pond Drive. At that parking lot, a second person was found, also dead. It was unclear whether that person had been shot," The New York Times reported.

The gunman was described as a white male wearing a maroon hooded sweatshirt and gray sweatpants.

The alert came more than four years after 32 people were gunned down and more than 20 others wounded on the Blacksburg, Virginia campus in a horrific shooting spree by a South Korea-born student, who killed himself at the end of the April 2007 attack.

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