Virginia Tech professor, a deacon, describes events after massacre

Published: 2007-04-18

ROANOKE, Va. (CNS) -- Deacon Michael J. Ellerbrock of St. Mary Parish in Blacksburg had just wrapped up his 9 a.m. class at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg April 16 "when it all happened," he said. A gunman, later identified by police as student Cho Seung-Hui, shot and killed two people in a residence hall and then went to Norris Hall, an engineering building, where he killed 30 others and wounded many others before taking his own life. Deacon Ellerbrock, a professor of natural resources and economics education at the university, told The Catholic Virginian, Richmond diocesan newspaper, that he walked to Squires Student Center "and watched it all unfold on TV" along with students. As soon as the shooting stopped he went to Norris, where he was met outside by state trooper Andy Mitro. Mitro, a parishioner from St. Mary, knew him as a deacon and allowed him to get information from law enforcement officers on the scene. "One officer told me an ROTC student grabbed (Cho) from behind and got a bullet right to the head," Deacon Ellerbrock said, recalling the awe that struck him in the first minutes afterward as he stood on the lawn of the classroom building where the massacre took place. "It's beyond comprehension how one person could kill so many with just two guns."

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