Ross Truett Ashley

Ross Truett Ashley

RADFORD, Va. (AP) _ A friend says the man who authorities say killed a Virginia Tech police officer had visited a shooting range this year but hadn’t gone for several months because he didn’t have bullets for his gun.

Matt Dailey says that he considered 22-year-old Ross Truett Ashley his best friend. Authorities say Ashley killed police officer Deriek Crouse on the Virginia Tech campus while the officer made a traffic stop, then killed himself not long after.

Dailey says the two had made two or three trips to the shooting range _ the same one used by Seung-Hui Cho, the gunman who killed 32 people and then himself on the campus in 2007.

However, Dailey dismissed any comparisons between Cho and his friend.