On April 16, 2007 the Virginia Polytechnic Institute was rocked by horror. Seong Hui Cho took over the school, and what ensued was later dubbed as one of the most gruesome college shooting in American History. Nine years later, Virginia Tech still mourns the tragedy.  

“I was on my way to my classes when my roommate stopped me,” math teacher Tristan Kissell said. “He had just gotten an email saying that the campus was on lockdown.”

Kissell was a student at Virginia Tech when the diabolical shooting had occurred. His classes that day were located in the same area where the shooting happened.

“It was a really good thing my roommate stopped me,” Kissell said.

History teacher Michelle Devoti’s husband and sister both lost friends from the shooting.

“My sister went to UVA and she had been trying to get in touch with her friend Leslie Sherman,” Devoti said. “I had kept reassuring her that she was fine.”

Leslie Sherman was one of the only victims from the northern Virginia area to have been killed. Devoti’s sister who had kept in close touch with her high school friends organized a run fundraiser for her deceased friend, who had also been a runner.

“My husband had already graduated, but he had been in a fraternity, and a guy from his fraternity was killed,” Devoti said. “If he ever wore a Tech t-shirt, people at the bank, the grocery store, even the park would ask if he had been at the shooting, which was really intrusive and insert itself into his day.”

After Columbine, the Tech shooting is one of America’s infamous, with 32 people killed, including the shooter, who committed suicide. Since then, other shootings like Sandy Hook and the Aurora Colorado theater shooting have occurred, but all of them fall short of the number of casualties that happened at Virginia Tech.

“You can never stop people from doing things, but you can take steps to prevent it,” Kissell said. “And I really think Virginia Tech has set an example for other colleges to take when there is a shooting, to minimize the amount of lives lost.”