Report: VA Tech officials notified their families, but not students as shooting unfolded

The NYT reported on Friday revisions to the Virginia official report on the Virginia Tech shootings two and a half years ago, that were made at the insistence of the victim's parents:

During the worst campus shooting spree in American history, Virginia Tech officials locked down some administrative offices and warned their own families more than an hour and a half before the rest of the campus was alerted, according to revisions made in the state’s official report on the rampage.

The delay in notifying the rest of the campus of the danger was obviously an inexcusable decision, but it gets worse:

They do not change the original thrust of the report — that university officials could have saved lives by notifying students and faculty members earlier about the killings on campus. But they provide a more detailed picture of the mistakes made by university officials in handling the emergency. The report, for instance, indicates that students who were initially locked down at West Ambler Johnston residence hall, where the first two victims were killed, were later released from the building by the police and allowed to attend their 9 a.m. classes. Two of those students then went to class in Norris Hall, where they were killed by the gunman.

And university officials failed to contact the family of the gunman’s first victim, Emily Hilscher, until after she had died, even though Ms. Hilscher survived for three hours and was taken to two hospitals before her death.

Thirty-two students and faculty members were killed that day. We'll never know how many others may have been spared if there hadn't been a delay in warning the campus.

-Diane