State appeals Va. Tech wrongful death verdict – Fort Worth Star Telegram
By STEVE SZKOTAK
Associated Press
RICHMOND, Va. — The state moved Thursday to reverse a wrongful death verdict in the 2007 massacre at Virginia Tech while the parents of two students killed want the university’s president to stand trial for failing to alert the campus when the first gunshots rang out.
The separate appeals were filed in the state Supreme Court within 24 hours of each other.A jury in March found the state negligent in the deaths of Erin N. Peterson and Julia K. Pryde and awarded their families $ 4 million each. A judge in June upheld the negligence finding but reduced the jury’s award to $ 100,000 for each family, the highest amount allowed under a cap on damages against the state.The women were among 32 faculty and students killed on April 16, 2007, on Tech’s Blacksburg campus. Student gunman Seung-Hui Cho also killed himself in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.While the actions that morning of Steger, campus police and other university leaders were put under the microscope in a courtroom, the president and other officials were dismissed from the case before trial, leaving the state as the lone defendant. Attorneys for the parents argued successfully that Steger and other university officials waited too long after the first two students were shot in a dormitory to alert the campus of the violence. The gunman was still at large.In his appeal, attorney Robert T. Hall cites a policy adopted by Tech’s Board of Visitors that recognizes the school’s responsibility to provide a safe campus for its students.”The policy required university relations and the university police to make the campus community aware of crimes … in a timely fashion [...]