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A 13-year-old girl allegedly abducted and killed by two Virginia Tech students was stabbed to death, according to preliminary results, Montgomery County Commonwealth’s Attorney Mary Pettitt said at a news conference today. A formal report of the cause of death has not yet been completed, Pettitt said. CW Attorney: Natalie Keepers will be charged with accessory before the fact, in addition to current charges in death of 13 y/o Nicole Lovell, 13, of Blacksburg, Virginia -- the city where Virginia Tech is located -- went missing Jan. 27, the Blacksburg Police Department said. Her body was found on Saturday in...

The Virginia Tech student charged with killing teen Nicole Madison Lovell knew the girl and an investigation shows that he used that relationship to abduct her before disposing of her body with the assistance of another Tech student, police said Sunday. Blacksburg police announced the second Tech student’s arrest, one day after Tech freshman David Edmond Eisenhauer, 18, of Columbia, Maryland, was arrested and charged with first-degree murder and abduction. Lovell’s remains were discovered Saturday in Surry County, North Carolina. The second Tech student, Natalie Marie Keepers, 19, of Laurel, Maryland, was arrested Sunday morning and faces a felony charge...

"This has been an extremely fast investigation within the just past 12 hours," Blacksburg Police Chief Anthony Wilson said in a news release. "And we still have a great deal to do as there are multiple interviews to conduct and evidence" to collect and analyze "as we reconstruct the timeline of events leading up to Nicole’s tragic death." Nicole was reported missing Wednesday and was last seen in Blacksburg between midnight and 7 a.m., police said. A report issued after her disappearance said she had undergone a liver transplant and required prescription medicine daily. Nicole's mother, Tammy Weeks, said in...

Hoping to start a bloody "race war," a black, gay, in-your-face Obama-supporting former TV reporter horrified Southwest Virginia TV viewers yesterday when he stalked and coolly murdered two white former TV station colleagues and wounded a white interview subject during a live broadcast.

The man who killed two journalists on live television in Virginia sent a suicide note to ABC News claiming the killings were in response to the shootings at a Charleston, SC church that killed 9 people in June. Bryce Williams, AKA Vester Lee Flanagan, contacted ABC News several times over the last several weeks saying he wanted to pitch a story to them. He never gave them an idea what the story was. Then today, Williams faxed what he called a “suicide note” where he claimed the shooting of the reporters was a response to the Charleston killings and that...

The deadly Ebola outbreak sweeping across three countries in West Africa is likely to last 12 to 18 months more, much longer than anticipated, and could infect hundreds of thousands of people before it is brought under control, say scientists mapping its spread for the federal government. “We hope we’re wrong,” said Bryan Lewis, an epidemiologist at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech. Both the time the model says it will take to control the epidemic and the number of cases it forecasts far exceed estimates by the World Health Organization, which said last month that it hoped to...

The University of Illinois board of trustees on Thursday affirmed its refusal to hire a professor who posted a series of harsh anti-Israel tweets this summer. The professor says the act is part of an effort by “wealthy and well organized groups to attack pro-Palestinian students and faculty.” The case has drawn wide attention on college campuses because it raises the issue of the suppression of academic freedom around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—a hot-button topic at universities across the country. Steven Salaita, a Palestinian-American professor with an expertise in indigenous studies, accepted a tenure-track position last year to start working in...

Steven Salaita, an associate professor of English at Virginia Tech, argues in a column posted this morning at Salon.com that Americans should stop saying "support the troops," calling it "trite and tiresome." He argues that patriotism and voicing support for the troops is merely a cover for American "imperialism" and likens American soldiers to murderers and ignorant individuals who "act like an Adam Sandler character."

Vice President Joe Biden is launching a White House campaign of road trips to promote gun control with a visit to Virginia, a state that has experienced its own school shooting tragedy yet maintains an avidly pro-gun tradition. … Virginia lawmakers have been debating a bill to require that private sellers conduct criminal background checks on buyers at gun shows. The current law only requires dealers to conduct the checks. Some of the survivors and families of victims of the 2007 shooting at Virginia Tech that killed 32 have been leading the push for tighter gun control measures. …

From Reuters:March 13, 1996 - BRITAIN - Gunman Thomas Hamilton burst into a primary school in the Scottish town of Dunblane and shot dead 16 children and their teacher before killing himself. April 28, 1996 - AUSTRALIA - Martin Bryant unleashed modern Australia's worst mass murder when he shot dead 35 people at the Port Arthur tourist site in the southern state of Tasmania. April 1999 - UNITED STATES - Two heavily-armed teenagers went on a rampage at Columbine High School in Littleton, Denver, shooting 13 students and staff before taking their own lives. July 1999 - UNITED STATES -...

The suspects drove away from the scene in a dark, regular-cab pickup truck. The last four digits of the truck’s license plate are 3330, according to witnesses at the scene. Police across the region are on the lookout following an attempted abduction on the Virginia Tech campus Friday morning in which two men tried to drag a woman into a pickup truck, according to the Virginia Tech Police. Maj. Kevin L. Foust said the woman, who has not been identified, was crossing Henderson Lawn from College Avenue to Alumni Mall about 2:15 a.m. when two men approached her. Police said...

Five years ago today, on a cold, sad Monday in April, Virginia Tech senior Seung Hui Cho went on a rampage that cost the lives of 32 of the Commonwealth’s best and brightest young people and sent a nation into mourning. Almost from the moment the attack was first reported, people started asking the question “What could have been done to prevent this tragedy?” While administrators at Virginia Tech continue to insist that there was nothing they could have done, I can point to a defining moment where Virginia Tech failed these students. It was January 31st, 2006 and Virginia...

Michelle Obama will address Virginia Tech graduates at the 2012 commencement ceremony on May 11 at Lane Stadium. Mrs. Obama joins U.S. Sen. Mark Warner as commencement speaker. Both will deliver commencement addresses. This is the first time a first lady has addressed a Virginia Tech commencement, according to Tech's morning news release. Mrs. Obama will speak at three college graduation ceremonies this spring, including two in key general election battleground states. Her first commencement address will be at Tech. The White House says the first lady has been inspired by the school's resiliency following the deadly 2007 campus shootings....

Jury finds Va. Tech negligent in '07 shootings By STEVE SZKOTAK, Associated Press – 1 minute ago CHRISTIANSBURG, Va. (AP) — A jury has found Virginia Tech negligent for delaying a campus warning of the first shootings in a 2007 campus massacre that left 33 dead. Jurors returned the verdict Wednesday in a wrongful death civil suit brought by the parents of two students who were killed on April 16, 2007, in the most deadly mass shooting in modern U.S. history. Jurors deliberated for 3 ½ hours before awarding $4 million to each family, and the state immediately filed a...

WASHINGTON -- When Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell decided today to sign legislation that repeals Virginia’s 19-year-old restriction on selling more than one handgun a month, he ignored the pleas of the Virginia Tech families affected by the worst shooting massacre in the history of the Commonwealth and the United States. Colin Goddard, who survived being shot four times at Virginia Tech and now works as an advocate with the Brady Campaign, was outraged. "When the Virginia Tech families spoke to the governor on Saturday, he offered sympathy, not solutions. Sympathy alone will not save lives. The governor had a chance...

WASHINGTON — Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Tuesday are expected to publish a report on the disputed gun trafficking investigation called Operation Fast and Furious, concluding that agents in Arizona — not Obama administration officials — were responsible for the tactics used in the inquiry and for providing misleading information relayed to Congress. In an 89-page report, titled “Fatally Flawed: Five Years of Gun-walking in Arizona,” the Democratic staff portrays Fast and Furious as the fourth investigation, dating back to 2006, in which Arizona-based agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives employed...

As a heated issue among the American public, gun control has undoubtedly become one of the most salient topics in relation to law and public policy. Additionally, as a response to the wave of campus crime and gun violence through the recent decades, many universities have adapted the policy of a gun-free zone for their campuses. Setting aside the Constitutional intent on the issue, empirical results on college campuses have consistently illustrated the harm that gun-free zones pose.

BLACKSBURG, Va. (AP) -- Police identified the Virginia Tech gunman on Friday as a part-time college student from nearby Radford University, though they still have not been able to say what led him to kill a police officer and then himself. The day before Thursday's shooting and campus-wide lockdown, Ross Truett Ashley, 22, stole a sport utility vehicle at gunpoint from a real estate office in Radford, police said. He dumped the car on the Virginia Tech campus and it was found Thursday. Police said that same day he walked up to the patrolman he did not know and fired,...

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