WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Authorities issued a lockdown on Thursday at the campus of Virginia Tech, site of a 2007 mass shooting that killed 32 people, after a man suspected of carrying a gun was seen on campus, the school said.
An alert on the school's website said: "Person with a gun reported near Dietrick (a dining hall). Stay inside. Secure doors. Emergency personnel responding. Call 911 for help."
A subsequent crime alert said three youths attending a camp on campus reported seeing a white man carrying what appeared to be a gun covered with a cloth.
"Officers responded immediately to the area but found no one matching the description," the crime alert said.
Wendell Flinchum, the chief of Virginia Tech's police force, said in a televised news conference that there had been no further sightings of the man but that police were still looking and wanted everyone on campus to stay indoors.
Activity at the school, which is currently being used to house dozens of academic and sports camps for children over the summer vacation, ground to a halt after the lockdown.
"Even the construction zone has come to a halt," a Virginia Tech communications officer, Lynn Davis, said on CNN. "I see no one outside. Everything has come to a halt."
Kelsey Heiter, a student and an editor of the Collegiate Times newspaper, told MSNBC that doors in campus buildings were locked to keep everyone inside during the alert.
The alert described the suspect as 6 feet tall with light brown hair and wearing a blue and white striped shirt, gray shorts and brown sandals.
The warning said the man was seeing walking fast in the direction of the volleyball courts.
Virginia Tech, which was criticized for not reacting quickly enough when gunman Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people and then himself on the campus in April 2007, responded quickly this time.
After sending out an initial warning on its website, the school continued to update people on campus and the city of Blacksburg kept its citizens apprised of the situation through its own Website.
"We're in a new era. Obviously, this campus experienced something pretty terrible four years ago," school spokesman Larry Hincker said at the news conference.
Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Education said it would fine Virginia Tech $55,000 for waiting more than two hours to alert the campus of the 2007 shooting.
An FBI spokeswoman in Richmond said they were aware of the reported incident and agents were going to the scene.
(Reporting by Jeremy Pelofsky, Roberta Rampton, Wendell Marsh and Doina Chiacu; Writing by Deborah Charles; Editing by Paul Simao)
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