BLACKSBURG, Va. — Once again, police rushed to the campus of Virginia Tech. Again, the words “man with a gun” raced across the university. And again, students and workers locked doors and turned off lights.
But a day-long search Thursday failed to locate the tall figure in the blue-and- white- striped shirt whom a group of summer campers thought they saw with a pistol, and by late afternoon, their report remained unconfirmed.
A five-hour campus lockdown was lifted shortly after 2:30 p.m. EDT.
Virginia Tech revamped its alert system after the 2007 shootings that killed 33 people. A university official said Thursday that more than 48,000 students and campus personnel received a text-message alert and that an e-mail alert was sent to every student and school employee.
