The day before finals, Jonathan Henderson, a freshman at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, was studying with friends when his dad called.
"Guys, we need to go," Henderson recalled telling them. "A police officer just got shot in the head."
Moments later, VT alert sirens went off and the university went into lockdown. From the eleventh floor of his dorm, Henderson and his friends watched as S.W.A.T. teams and fleets of police vehicles converged on campus.
The Collegiate Times, VT's student newspaper, would later identify the officer as 39-year-old Deriek Crouse, one of two shot to death Thursday.
Henderson's father witnessed the first shooting and was the first to alert police, Henderson said.
The shooter "just looked at me," his father told Henderson. "And all I did was just look right at the gun. And then he started walking away."
Henderson's father was on his lunch break when the shooter approached Crouse's driver's side window, shooting the officer at point-blank range.
His father, who had an ear infection at the time, "just heard this pop sound," Henderson said. Then when he looked, the officer appeared to be gone.
"Then I saw the police officer with a bullet in his head slouched toward the passenger side, with blood all over him," Henderson's father told him.
At that point, the shooter was only ten or fifteen feet away; the two made eye contact, and the shooter walked away.
Henderson's father called the police, and within six minutes the campus was on full lockdown.
Meanwhile, evidence suggests the shooter walked to a nearby parking lot, where he shot and killed himself.
On a campus still scarred by 2007's tragic mass shooting, Henderson said students were "shaken" Thursday.
"People don't take anything lightly anymore after what's gone on in the past," Henderson said. "But I felt safe. I think the university handled it really, really well."
Ben Siegel contributed to this report.
