AP
Ross Truett Ashley
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) _ The family of a man who investigators say gunned down a Virginia Tech police officer offers its condolences and prayers to the family of the slain law enforcement officer.
In an unsigned statement sent Sunday to The Associated Press, the family of 22-year-old Ross Truett Ashley also requested that their privacy be respected. They said there would be no additional statements. Continue reading
Photo from VT News Daily Email
BLACKSBURG, Va. (AP) _ Thursday’s point-blank assassination of a Virginia Tech campus policeman is sure to renew the gun control battle in all its fury before the General Assembly next month.
The debate had quieted somewhat in the nearly five years since a student in a murderous rage shot and killed 32 people at Virginia Tech. Continue reading
Virginia Tech Police Officer Deriek W. Crouse
The Virginia Tech police officer who was gunned down is being identified as a 39-year-old Army veteran and father of five. The university said last night that the officer was Deriek W. Crouse. He joined the Virginia Tech Police Department on Oct. 27, 2007. That was about six months after 33 people were killed at the school in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. Crouse previously worked at a jail and a sheriff’s department.
Authorities are still sorting out why a Virginia Tech police officer was killed in a campus parking lot by a gunman who then apparently shot himself to death. The university last night identified the officer as Deriek W. Crouse, a 39-year-old Army veteran and married father of five who joined the campus police force about six months after the 2007 shooting rampage that left 33 people dead. Crouse was killed after pulling a driver over in a traffic stop. The gunman, who wasn’t involved in the traffic stop, walked into the parking lot and ambushed the officer. Before it became clear that the gunman in yesterday’s attack was dead, the school locked down the campus and used a high-tech alert system to warn students and faculty members to stay indoors.
SIRTE, Libya (AP) _ Officials in Libya’s transitional government say Moammar Gadhafi has been captured and possibly killed in the fall of his hometown but there is no confirmation from the country’s most senior leaders. NATO says it hit a convoy of Gadhafi’s loyalists fleeing Sirte on Thursday morning but it could not confirm whether the ousted Libyan leader was in the convoy or possibly killed or captured. Information Minister Mahmoud Shammam says he has confirmed that Gadhafi was dead from fighters that said they saw the body.
RICHMOND – Civil-liberties groups are suing a southwest Virginia school board for posting the Ten Commandments, contending that the display violates the Constitution’s guarantee of separation of church and state. Continue reading
WASHINGTON (AP) _ President Barack Obama says Osama bin Laden, the glowering mastermind behind the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks that killed thousands of Americans, was killed in an operation led by the United States. A small team of Americans carried out the attack and took custody of bin Laden’s remains, the president said Sunday in a dramatic late-night statement at the White House. A jubilant crowd gathered outside the White House as word spread of bin Laden’s death after a global manhunt that lasted nearly a decade.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court rejected a call Monday from Virginia’s attorney general to depart from its usual practice and put review of the health care law on a fast track. Instead, judicial review of President Barack Obama’s signature legislation will continue in federal appeals courts.
The justices turned down a request by Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, a leading opponent of the law, to resolve questions about its constitutionality quickly. The Obama administration opposed Cuccinelli’s plea.