A jury has awarded $8 million to the families of two victims of the 2007 Virginia Tech shootings in a wrongful-death lawsuit. The suit, brought by relatives of students Erin Peterson and Julia Pryde, who were killed, alleged Virginia Tech officials were negligent in taking too long to notify the campus that a gunman was on the loose. The Virginia Tech massacre began when two students were shot and killed in a dorm on April 16, 2007. Virginia Tech’s lawyers said that school officials did not alert the campus because they believed the shootings were an isolated incident.

Subsequently, Seung-Hui Cho, a student, shot and killed 30 more people, including Peterson and Pryde, before turning the gun on himself. This was the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history. It was contended by the families that Virginia Tech’s failure to warn anyone about a gunman on campus led to the killing of their children. But the school’s lawyers argued there was no evidence that a warning would have changed what happened that day. They argued that no one could have reasonably foreseen Cho’s massacre. The issue of foreseeability was for the jury to determine, and it ruled for the families.

Source: Reuters