Virginia Tech holds vigil for Illinois campus shooting victims

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) _ Virginia Tech held a candlelight vigil on Monday to show support for those affected by the shootings at Northern Illinois University.
Hokies United, the student group that formed after the April shootings at Virginia Tech that left 33 dead, organized the vigil and has asked the university community to wear NIU’s school colors of red and black as a sign of support and solidarity on Monday.
Hokies United will also temporarily lay a red and black Hokie Stone near the campus memorial dedicated to those who lost their lives in the April 16 shootings. Students plan to deliver the stone to Northern Illinois, in DeKalb, Ill., in a week or so.
On Thursday, a 27-year-old former NIU student opened fire on a geology class, killing five people before committing suicide.
The shooting brought back horrific memories for the Virginia Tech community, still reeling from its own tragedy. Many people on campus donned red and black on Friday in a show of support.
The latest shooting also left some families of the Virginia Tech victims feeling anguished.
“It just brings it all back. I can’t imagine what they’re going through, but I know what they’re going through,” said Suzanne Grimes, whose son Kevin Sterne was injured in the Tech shootings and appeared in a now-famous photograph being carried by rescue workers with a tourniquet around his leg. “I feel their pain, and I feel their loss.”
Sterne, who returned to Blacksburg to pursue a master’s degree, is deeply upset by the latest shootings, and is concerned about entering a classroom, said Grimes, of Eighty Four, Pa. He hopes to reach out to the victims’ families and the survivors of the Illinois shooting, she said.
Virginia Tech president Charles Steger also expressed sympathy for the NIU community.
“This horrific news will certainly bring to mind the hurt, pain, and trauma we experienced less than a year ago,” Steger wrote in a message posted on the university’s web site.
“I have sent my condolences and offer of assistance to the president of NIU. Our university community was bolstered and comforted by the outpouring of support from campuses around the nation and the world,” Steger said. “I am sure that expressions of support from the Virginia Tech community will mean much to that now suffering campus community.”