Virginia Tech: Ross Truett Ashley named as gunman

Police were unable to say what Ashley's motive was for killing the officer

The gunman who shot a Virginia Tech police officer and then turned the gun on himself was a 22-year-old from a nearby university, police say.

Police and Virginia Tech named Deriek Crouse's killer as Ross Truett Ashley, a Radford University student.
Officials said Ashley had stolen a car on Wednesday from a real estate office in Radford, which was later found on the Virginia Tech campus.
The shooting triggered a campus lockdown.
Ashley, who was enrolled part-time at Radford, reportedly entered a real estate office with a handgun and demanded the keys to an employees' vehicle, police said.
The vehicle, a white Mercedes SUV, was found the next day on Virginia Tech's campus, but police did not specify at what time.
At around 12:15 EST (17:15 GMT) on Thursday, police say Ashley shot Crouse while the officer was sitting in his car, and fled on foot.
He changed clothes at a greenhouse on campus and left a jumper and woollen cap in a backpack behind.
Shortly after seeing a man walking through a nearby car park, an officer found Ashley dead at the park.
He had suffered a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
There was no information about how or why Ashley chose to stop running and turn the gun on himself.
Virginia Tech was the site of the worst US school shooting, in 2007, when a gunman killed 32 people and himself.
Missing links Police spokeswoman Corinne Geller says they are still trying to determine why officer Deriek Crouse was attacked.
Investigators have found no link between the gunman and Crouse, a married father of five and 39-year-old army veteran.

The university issued four separate alerts and kept students on campus in lockdown

  

Earlier on Friday, Ms Geller said a video camera inside the officer's vehicle captured footage of the suspect, and Virginia State Police confirmed that ballistics testing linked the officer's death and the suicide.
About 150 students gathered in a candlelight vigil on Thursday evening at the campus memorial for the shootings of four years ago.
An official vigil is planned on Friday night.
"Our hearts are broken again," university President Charles W Steger said on Thursday.
Deriek Crouse received an award in 2008 for his commitment to the department's efforts to deter drink-driving. He was trained as a crisis intervention officer and a defensive tactics instructor.
He was one of about 50 officers on the campus force and had served there for four years, joining about six months after the 2007 massacre.
Thirty-two people died in April that year when a 23-year-old South Korean, Seung-Hui Cho, went on a gun rampage before turning the weapon on himself.
His death came on the same day Virginia Tech appealed against a $55,000 (£35,200) fine imposed by the government for not reacting quickly enough to the 2007 massacre.
Source BBC

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