Students and faculty at Virginia Tech University were in shock Monday after a gunman shot and killed at least 31 people and injured 21 during the most deadly shooting spree in U.S. history.

Federal law enforcement officials told FOX News that 32 are dead, including the shooter. Police at the campus in Blacksburg, Va., said there was only one shooter responsible for the two shootings, which occurred about two hours apart from each other.

But there are still many questions left unanswered, including who the shooter was, whether he was a student, why no one saw or stopped him in between shootings, and why he decided to launch the killing spree.

"The university was struck today with a tragedy of monumental proportions," Virginia Tech President Charles Steger said during a press conference shortly after noon. "The university is shocked and horrified that this would befall our campus ... I cannot begin to convey my own personal sense of loss over this senselessness of such an incomprehensible and heinous act."

Steger said school officials are notifying victims' next of kin, and state police and the FBI are still investigating the various crime scenes. They are still trying to identify all the victims. The university will set up counseling centers for students and faculty.

(Story continues below)

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         o Shock of Virginia Tech Shooting Reverberates North to Washington, D.C.
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         o Virginia Tech Massacre

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The Web site for the campus newspaper, The Collegiate Times, reported that police have recovered two 9mm handguns. That report was not yet confirmed by FOX News.

At 7:15 a.m. Monday, a 911 call came in to the campus police department concerning an incident at West Ambler Johnston, a residence hall, and that there were multiple shooting victims. While that investigation was underway, a second shooting was reported in Norris Hall, located at the opposite end of the 2,600-acre campus.

Virginia Tech Police Chief Wendell Flinchum said at least one person was killed at West Ambler Johnston but several others were injured in that shooting. The others were killed in Norris Hall, Flinchum said.

Virginia Tech is planning a 4 p.m. EDT press conference.

Flinchum said the Norris Hall gunman was dead, but wouldn't say whether the shooter killed himself.

Junior David Jenkins told FOX News he heard screaming in his dorm inside West Ambler Johnston residence hall Monday morning, but didn't know what it was. He later heard from other residents that there was a gunman in the building. Jenkins later heard of the mass shootings at Norris Hall.

"From what I heard, he chained up some of the doors so people couldn't get in and he basically was just going to every classroom trying to get in, and just started shooting inside classrooms," Jenkins said.

One of his friends was in a Norris classroom targeted by the gunman, Jenkins said.

"He was very fortunate," Jenkins said. "He said every single person in the room was shot, killed and was in the ground. He laid on the ground with everyone … he played dead and he was OK."

Victims were being treated at Montgomery Regional Hospital and Carilion New River Valley Medical Center in Christiansburg with gunshot wounds and other injuries.

President Bush was "horrified" of news of shooting rampage at Virginia Tech, said White House spokeswoman Dana Perino. The White House is monitoring the incident. Local NBC affiliate WSLS reported that Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, who was heading for a meeting in Tokyo, Japan, for a two-week trade mission, is now returning to the United States. The U.S. Senate and House of Representatives both held a moment of silence.

Last August, the campus was closed when an escaped jail inmate allegedly killed a hospital guard and a sheriff's deputy involved in a massive manhunt. The accused gunman, William Morva , faces capital murder charges.

On April 13, the campus closed three of its academic halls after they received a letter stating that explosive devices were in the building. Classes were canceled for the remainder of the day. A bomb threat was also made against Torgerson Hall on April 2. A $5,000 reward has been offered for any information on those threats.

"For some reason, this just seemed a little different … it was more than just a sick joke someone was playing," one student told FOX News about those bomb threats.

There is no connection so far between the bomb threats and Monday's shooting.

Student Daniel Smith was walking across field heading toward Norris Hall with his girlfriend when he heard yelling, then a police officer whisked they pair off to a patrol car to safety.

"We weren't quite sure but we did see police taking out people who were heavily hurt," Smith said.

Smith, along with other students, said it was scary enough having a gunman roaming campus on the first day of classes last year, but between that, recent bomb threats and Monday's shooting, it's almost too much to take in.

"I never thought it could actually happen, at a big school like this but a small community. Growing up with Columbine and 9/11, it hits you in the hurt but I've never felt this before," said Smith, an engineering student. "I'm scared to see the list [of the dead victims] when that list comes out, because I'm bound to know some students on there … it's tearing at me. I've never had a big loss before, this is terrible."

Virginia Tech student Blake Harrison said he was on his way to class near Norris Hall when he saw chaos.

"This teacher comes flying out of Norris, he's bleeding from his arm or his shoulder ... all these students were coming out of Norris trying to take shelter in Randolph [Hall]. All these kids were freaked out," Harrison said.

The students and faculty were barricading themselves in their classrooms after what one person described as an Asian male wearing a vest opened fire.

The shooter was "wearing a vest covered in clips was just unloading on their door, going from classroom to classroom … they said it never seemed like it was going to stop and there was just blood all over," Harrison said.

Matt Merone, a campus senior, was on his way to campus Monday morning when he saw a police officer grab a male student who was bleeding from his stomach area, and put him in a police vehicle, presumably en route to a hospital. Other students were seen jumping out windows to escape the gunman.

Student Amanda Johnson was walking between Norris and Randolph halls around 9:45 a.m. when she heard six shots fired.

"I've been target shooting since I was a little kid so I knew what the sounds were," said Johnson, who saw a male student jump out of a Norris Hall window to escape.

"It just seemed like students were trying to figure out any way to get out of that building as soon as possible," added student Mike O'Brien.

Many students didn't check their e-mail before heading to class Monday, so they didn't read the school's warnings about the first shooting. Those who did check their e-mail said they stayed put.

"There are police driving throughout the neighborhoods with a loudspeaker saying, 'this is an emergency, everyone stay inside, we're looking for suspicious activity," said Brittany Sammon, a senior Virginia Tech student staying at an apartment off campus. "There's no one outside at all, there's no traffic, there's nothing … everyone's doing what they said."

Premeditated Murder?

The FBI joined police on the scene to investigate. Agency spokesman Richard Kolko in Washington said there was no immediate evidence to suggest it was a terrorist attack, "but all avenues will be explored."

Senior official with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives told FOX News that agency's response to the Virginia Tech incident was "immediate," and the bureau is making all of its local and national resources, including its crimes lab, available to the Virginia State Police.

Ten ATF agents are now on the Virginia Tech campus assisting with weapons identification. They are collecting shell casings and running some preliminary tests on scene. Once the weapon has been identified, they will begin an "urgent trace" to determine its origins — where it came from, to whom it was registered, and its history of ownership. All material will be sent to the ATF's national crime lab in Maryland.

The ATF is also assisting with "forensic mapping" of the crime scene — a painstaking process employed by investigators that 'maps out' the scene and incident in minute detail.

Former Assistant FBI Director Bill Gavin said if reports that the shooter chained the doors to Norris Hall are true, that is "definite proof of premeditation," as is the number of magazines and rounds of ammunition he apparently had.

"He didn't take that just to shoot one particular person," Gavin said. "He had to have something going on there that said he was going to shoot a whole bunch of people at the same time."

All classes were canceled for Monday and Tuesday but campus will open at 8 a.m. EDT Tuesday. Faculty and staff on certain parts of campus were told to go home.

Families wishing to reunite with students are suggested to meet at the Inn at Virginia Tech. School officials are making plans for a convocation Tuesday at noon at Cassell Coliseum.

Virginia Tech has the largest full-time student population in Virginia, with more than 25,000 students. It consists of eight colleges and graduate school and offers 60 bachelor's degree programs and 140 masters and doctoral degree programs.

The main campus includes more than 100 buildings located on 2,600 acres, and includes an airport.

BLACKSBURG, Va. —  The gunman responsible for at least the second of the two Virginia Tech attacks that claimed 33 lives to become the deadliest shooting rampage in U.S. history has been identified Cho Seung-Hui, a campus student and native of South Korea, Virginia Tech police said Tuesday.

Virginia Tech Police Chief Wendell Flinchum said the shooter was a 23-year-old resident alien who was an undergraduate senior English major. He had a residence in Centreville, Va., but was also living on campus in Harper Hall.

While authorities say they don't have evidence to confirm yet that Cho — now dead after taking his own life — was also the gunman in the first shooting at West Ambler Johnston residence hall, they have made clear they don't believe there was a second shooter.

"It's certainly reasonable for us to assume Cho was the shooter in both places but we don't have the evidence to take us there at this point in time," said Virginia State Police Superintendent Col. Steve Flaherty said during a press conference Tuesday. "We also have no evidence to indicate there was an accomplice at either event" but officials are still investigating whether the shooter had any help during the day.

"Quite frankly, we have the one chance to get it right," Flaherty said, so authorities want to make sure all evidence points to one shooter before they rule out the possibility of a second gunman.

Police are still searching for a motive.

"He was a loner, and we're having difficulty finding information about him," school spokesman Larry Hincker said.

Flinchum said a 9-mm and 22-caliber handgun was recovered from Norris Hall, where the second shooting took place. Bullets, shell casings and other evidence was examined by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

"Lab results confirmed that one of the two weapons seized in Norris Hall was used in both shootings," Flinchum said.

Processing the scene at Norris Hall has been difficult, Flinchum said, because of the "tremendous chaos and panic" that ensued after the shootings began. Personal effects were strewn about the entire second floor, he said.

"As a result, it's greatly complicated our processing of the scene," he said.

Victims were found in at least four classrooms, as well as a stairwell. Flinchum said the gunman was found dead among several victims in one of the classrooms.

Sources told ABC News that after Cho killed the one female and one male at West Ambler Johnston Monday morning, he returned to his own dorm room where he re-armed and left a "disturbing note" before entering Norris Hall on the other side of campus to continue his rampage and kill 30 more before shooting himself.

Virginia Tech President Charles Steger told FOX News in an interview Tuesday morning that police had detained a "person of interest" shortly after the shooting at West Ambler Johnston, but that person was not Cho.

Flinchum said that person was an acquaintance of the female victim shot at the dorm room and was stopped in a vehicle off campus and detained for questioning. But while he was being questioned, the second shooting took place. Flinchum said they are still looking into the possibility that that person helped Cho in some way that day.

Flinchum also said there is no evidence yet to connect Monday's shootings to two bomb threats made at the school earlier this month.

Federal law enforcement sources confirmed that the address for Cho is 14713 Truitt Farm Dr. in Centreville, Va. Sources familiar with the investigation said a search of the property was done overnight by federal agents, Virginia State Police and Fairfax County Police. Authorities would not say what, if anything, was found, or who else lives in that house.

The school administration is under fire by some who say it didn't inform students sooner about the first shooting. Many students went to campus after the shooting for class, unaware that a shooting had taken place at West Ambler Johnston. Some students said their first warning came more than two hours after the first shooting, in an e-mail at 9:26 a.m. By then, the second shooting had begun.

Steger said the university was trying to notify students who were already on-campus, not those who were commuting in. With 9,000 students on campus, 15,000 or 16,000 more in transit on their way to class, and 7,000 employees, Steger told FOX News, "if you don't do it right and you report misinformation, you've got chaos, and we were trying to manage the incident the best we could."

Steger said authorities believed the first shooting was a domestic, isolated incident confined to the building and that authorities closed down that building and surrounded it with police as a safety precaution. They thought the incident was a murder-suicide.

Asked whether he did everything he could to save lives on campus, Steger said: '"I believe, based on the information we had at the time, we took the appropriate steps."

• List of Victims in Virginia Tech Massacre

A federal law enforcement source told FOX News that officials had a tough time identifying the shooter.

"They've had trouble running the prints," the source said, and the shooter has serious facial disfiguration, suggesting the shooter may have shot himself in the head.

Cho was in the U.S. as a resident alien, which means he had to obtain a visa — either a nonimmigrant visa for temporary stay, or an immigrant visa for permanent residence — in order to enter the United States. According to the State Department, the type of visa one must have is defined by immigration law, and relates to the purpose of one's travel.

A federal law enforcement source told FOX News that Cho was a legal permanent resident and had been in the United States for some time. He was not here on a student visa.

'Is My Child Safe?'

The slayings left people of this once-peaceful mountain town and the university at its heart praying for the victims of the deadliest shooting rampage in U.S. history, struggling to find order in a tragedy of such unspeakable horror it defies reason.

"For Ryan and Emily and for those whose names we do not know," one woman pleaded in a church service Monday night.

Another mourner added: "For parents near and far who wonder at a time like this, 'Is my child safe?"'

A convocation will be held on campus at 2 p.m. EDT. President Bush and Gov. Tim Kaine planned to attend. About 40,000 people are expected to attend an 8 p.m. vigil Tuesday night.

The shooting began about 7:15 a.m. on the fourth floor of West Ambler Johnston, a high-rise coed dormitory where two people died.

Police were still investigating around 9:15 a.m., when a gunman wielding two handguns and carrying multiple clips of ammunition stormed Norris Hall, a classroom building a half-mile away on the other side of the 2,600-acre campus.

At least 15 people were hurt in the second attack, some seriously. Many found themselves trapped after someone, apparently the shooter, chained and locked Norris Hall doors from the inside.

Students jumped from windows, and students and faculty carried away some of the wounded without waiting for ambulances to arrive.

SWAT team members with helmets, flak jackets and assault rifles swarmed over the campus. A student used his cell-phone camera to record the sound of bullets echoing through a stone building.

Inside Norris, the attack began with a thunderous sound from Room 206 — "what sounded like an enormous hammer," said Alec Calhoun, a 20-year-old junior who was in a solid mechanics lecture in a classroom next door.

Screams followed an instant later, and the banging continued. When students realized the sounds were gunshots, Calhoun said, he started flipping over desks to make hiding places. Others dashed to the windows of the second-floor classroom, kicking out the screens and jumping from the ledge of Room 204, he said.

"I must've been the eighth or ninth person who jumped, and I think I was the last," said Calhoun, of Waynesboro, Va. He landed in a bush and ran.

Calhoun said that the two students behind him were shot, but that he believed they survived. Just before he climbed out the window, Calhoun said, he turned to look at his professor, who had stayed behind, apparently to prevent the gunman from opening the door.

The instructor was killed, Calhoun said.

Erin Sheehan, who was in the German class next door to Calhoun's class, told the student newspaper, the Collegiate Times, that she was one of only four of about two dozen people in the class to walk out of the room. The rest were dead or wounded, she said.

She said the gunman "was just a normal-looking kid, Asian, but he had on a Boy Scout-type outfit. He wore a tan button-up vest, and this black vest, maybe it was for ammo or something."

The gunman first shot the professor in the head and then fired on the class, another student, Trey Perkins, told The Washington Post.

"Everyone hit the floor at that moment," said Perkins, 20, of Yorktown, Va., a sophomore studying mechanical engineering. "And the shots seemed like it lasted forever."

Some students bitterly complained they got no warning from the university until an e-mail that arrived more than two hours after the first shots.

"I think the university has blood on their hands because of their lack of action after the first incident," said Billy Bason, 18, who lives on the seventh floor of the dorm.

Steger said authorities believed the shooting at the dorm was a domestic dispute and mistakenly thought the gunman had fled the campus.

"We had no reason to suspect any other incident was going to occur," he said.

The 9:26 e-mail sent by the school had few details:

"A shooting incident occurred at West Amber Johnston earlier this morning. Police are on the scene and are investigating." The message warned students to be cautious and contact police about anything suspicious.

Class have been canceled for the rest of the week, and Norris Hall will remain closed for the rest of the semester, Steger said.

Until Monday, the deadliest shooting in modern U.S. history was in Killeen, Texas, in 1991, when George Hennard plowed his pickup truck into a Luby's Cafeteria and shot 23 people to death, then himself.

The massacre Monday took place almost eight years to the day after the Columbine High School bloodbath near Littleton, Colo. On April 20, 1999, two teenagers killed 12 fellow students and a teacher before taking their own lives.

Previously, the deadliest campus shooting in U.S. history was a rampage that took place in 1966 at the University of Texas at Austin, where Charles Whitman climbed the clock tower and opened fire with a rifle from the 28th-floor observation deck. He killed 16 people before he was shot to death by police.

Founded in 1872, Virginia Tech is nestled in southwestern Virginia, about 160 miles west of Richmond. With more than 25,000 full-time students, it has the state's largest full-time student population. The school is best known for its engineering school and its powerhouse Hokies football team.

Last August, the opening day of classes was canceled when an escaped jail inmate allegedly killed a hospital guard off campus and fled to the Tech area. A sheriff's deputy was killed just off campus. The accused gunman, William Morva, faces capital murder charges.

Among the dead were professors Liviu Librescu and Kevin Granata, said Ishwar K. Puri, the head of the engineering science and mechanics department.

Librescu, an Israeli, was born in Romania and was known internationally for his research in aeronautical engineering, Puri wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press.

Granata and his students researched muscle and reflex response and robotics. Puri called him one of the top five biomechanics researchers in the country working on movement dynamics in cerebral palsy.

Also killed was Ryan Clark, a student from Martinez, Ga., who had several majors and carried a 4.0 grade-point average, said Vernon Collins, coroner in Columbia County, Ga.

His friend Gregory Walton, a 25-year-old who graduated last year, said he feared the nightmare had just begun.

"I knew when the number was so large that I would know at least one person on that list," said Walton, a banquet manager. "I don't want to look at that list. I don't want to.

"It's just, it's going to be horrible, and it's going to get worse before it gets better."