By STEVE SZKOTAK
Associated Press
RICHMOND, Va. – Attorneys representing the parents of two Virginia Tech students slain in the 2007 mass campus killings have rested in their wrongful death lawsuit against the state.
They concluded their presentation to jurors Friday after four days of testimony that included Tech President Charles Steger (STEE’-gur), university officials, police and the parents of victims of the most deadly mass shooting in modern U.S. history.
In tearful testimony, the parents told of their grim journeys to Virginia Tech, not knowing if their daughters had survived the shootings. The father of Erin Peterson said he immediately left work in Maryland when he heard of the shootings and was told his daughter was alive and in a hospital, only to be told she was dead.
“She was my best friend. She was my baby,” Grafton W. Peterson said of his daughter, who would be 24.
“If they told the truth in the beginning, I wouldn’t be here,” he told jurors. “Tell the truth.”
The state is expected to begin its presentation on Monday in Montgomery County Circuit Court.
The parents of Petersen and Julia K. Pryde are each seeking $100,000 and an accounting of the slaying of 32 on the Blacksburg campus on April 16, 2007. They maintain officials were slow to alert the campus to the first two shootings.
President Charles Steger defended his actions during the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history during two hours of testimony earlier in the day Friday, saying in court: “I tried my best.”
Steger said that officials delayed sending a warning after two students were killed early that morning to avoid panic on campus and allow the university to identify the victims and contact their families. Student gunman Seung-Hui Cho shot and killed those students in a dormitory before continuing his attack hours later at a classroom building.
Asked by an attorney for the parents if he erred, Steger said, “That’s not my conclusion. We did the best we could … based upon the information we had at the time.”
(Copyright 2012 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)