Virginia Tech graduate student Jamal Albarghouti was on his way to see an adviser when police officers ran past him. The police told him to hit the ground. Albarghouti took cover, then took out his cell phone and captured some of the first images from Monday’s deadly shooting in Blacksburg, Virginia. (Watch his video.)

“When I saw the policemen taking their guns out, then I knew that this was serious,” Albarghouti says. His dramatic video shows police closing in on Norris Hall. Gunfire can be heard in the background. Albarghouti quickly downloaded his video to his computer and sent it to CNN I-Report. Within minutes, his video was aired on CNN.

Albarghouti wasn’t the only student capturing images of the tragedy. Eighteen-year-old freshman Patrick Rougeux woke up in his dorm room to the sounds of the sirens, followed by the campus alert system. He looked out his dorm window to see police right outside, guns drawn. That’s when he took this photo.
“At the time, we thought the shooter was still be on the loose,” Rougeux says. “It was scary.”(View our gallery of I-Reporters' accounts of the scene on campus)


Freshman Alex Miller, 18, was on the 5th floor of Pritchard Hall when he heard someone yelling “get down on the ground” outside. He looked out his window and saw a police officer on top of an unidentified man. Miller grabbed his digital camera and shot video as the officer patted down the man –- then let him go. (Watch his video.)
Another officer spotted Miller and his fellow students looking from their dorm rooms. One shouted “Get inside ands stay away from the windows.” Miller says he turned on the TV and watched the news in horror and disbelief. “Right now, we are just hoping out friends come back from class OK.”