Melissa and I have been in touch with lots of people over the last two days, and everybody we’re directly connected to at Tech is—thankfully—safe and accounted for. We do, however, have some second- and third-level connections directly affected by the tragedy. One VT student from our church lost one of his professors. A friend-of-a-friend knew Ryan Clark, the RA killed in the initial dorm shooting. It also turns out that Melissa had met/known at least two of the faculty victims during her year at Tech. There’s a lot of hurt all throughout Virginia, even here in the great suburban north (where both the killer and many of the victims came from), and it’s going to take a long time for it all to start healing up. God be with the victims, their families, and the entire extended VT community.
Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.