'You Could Feel the Vibrations of Each Gunshot'

April 17, 2007 — -- World News anchor Charles Gibson spoke with some of the student survivors of the shooting massacre at Virginia Tech, including two young women who were on the second floor of Norris Hall when Seung-Hui Cho began a shooting rampage that left 33 people, including Cho, dead.

The students described how they helped jam a table against the door of their classroom to keep Seung-Hui Cho out as he was firing shots. They succeeded, but as they huddled on the floor, pressing the legs of the table against the door, he fired high high into the air, sending bullets through the door, right above their head.

Gibson asked the students when they first heard shots, "9:40 exactly, I was looking at my watch, and seeing how many minutes were left for math class to be over with," commented another senior, Theresa Walsh.

"You just hear a loud crack followed by 'bam, bam, bam," the 22-year-old added. "I'm the closest one to the door so I got up and went in the hallway and that's when I saw the professor across from me had this horified look on his face and then a few seconds later I caught aglimpse out of the corner of my eye and I saw the shooter and he had just walked out of the classrom, and was walking down the hall towards our classroom."

Walsh said Cho's facial expression was "blank" … Just no expression. He was walking, he didn't raise his gun fast."

One senior, Ben Anderson, 22, told Gibson when he heard the gunshots from Norris, he and his classmates were not sure what was causing the noise. "We thought it was construction, but then when we saw the police rolling up in the cars -- we realized what was going on," Anderson said.

'We Need to Block the Door'

The students in Room 205 said Cho came from the other end of the hallway and opened fire on many classrooms, including two where German and engineering classes were being held.

"One of our classmates, Zach, says, 'we need to block the door, he's coming for our classroom next,'" said Lisa Kaiser, 21, a junior at Virginia Tech. "And we threw a table up against the door, and sure enough, two seconds after we threw that table against door he was at our handle trying to get in, pushing against the door.

"Then he started firing bullets through our door and we were lying on the ground and they were going over us," Kaiser said.

Walsh said she could see the gunman pushing against the door. "He had tried twice to push it open and they were like stronger than him. I mean, four people or so, pushing on the table … and you could feel the bullets, like you could feel … the vibrations of each gunshot.

"He shot, 'bam, bam, bam, bam' and he didn't stop until his clip was empty and you heard the clip hit the ground right outside our door. He reloaded and started again. And the only silence you heard the entire time throughout shooting was when he had that to reload," Walsh said.

"It continued for probably 10 to 15 minutes," Kaiser said. "He was running back and forth, just up and down the hallway … shooting."

She said it took nearly an hour for the police to arrive, and rescue them at roughly 10:20 a.m. "We didn't get out of the room until 40 minutes probably after the first shot," Kaiser added.

And during that wait time, she said, everyone sat quietly.

"Everyone was scared, but calm. Everyone kept their composure. Everyone was quiet," she said. "We knew we had to be silent because if we were to be loud, he would just know there is life and he would want to shoot more at us. So, everyone was quiet, everyone in my class did a great job."

Memories of that gun now linger in one students' mind. "It won't go away. It won't," Walsh said. "If I close my eyes, it's there. I know exactly what it looks like, I know what kind it is. I know what it sounds like, I can't get it out."

Walsh said everybody in her class survived, and she's convinced if they had not barricaded the door of their classroom they would have all been on the victim list. "There were 10 or 11 of us, [would have been] the easiest kills he had done that entire day, with nowhere to run."

As the kids now react to the incident, one is saddened by its place in their school's history.

"It's such a huge travesty because now, it's like, Virginia Tech has the highest killing in U.S. history. And it's like that's my school, that happened when I was standing outside that building," said 20-year-old sophomore Sean Kosman.

"We all grieve differently," Walsh said. "I haven't been able to sleep, I can't eat much. My parents are coming down tonight. I've just been with friends and roommates … We all slept in the living room because I couldn't be alone. I just haven't been handling it very well."

Kaiser said she's been spending a lot of time with friends. "Whenever I see somebody I know -- giving them a hug," she said. "It's never felt so good before."