BLACKSBURG Va.
After a student gunman killed four of his classmates and his
German teacher and then left, Derek O’Dell had to wedge one of his sneakers
under the classroom door to keep the attacker from returning to kill even more.
There was no lock on the door to protect Derek and his
wounded classmates against Seung-Hui Cho, who killed a total of 30 students and
faculty, plus himself, at Virginia Tech’s Norris Hall.
Safety experts say that while school officials across the
nation re-evaluate campus safety in the aftermath of the Virginia Tech tragedy,
many are overlooking a simple solution: putting locks on the inside of
classroom doors.
“Often it’s the simple stuff that will prevent a
tragedy like this, and often it’s the simpler things that will make the bigger
difference,” said Michael Dorn, a campus safety consultant and author of
19 books on the topic. “It’s not the complex systems that cost millions of
dollars.”
O’Dell was shot in one arm, but he and some classmates
barricaded the door to Room 207 with his shoe and their bodies “the
heaviest thing in the room was bolted down and the desks were pretty
flimsy,” he said as Cho returned twice to try to finish them off. When he
couldn’t get in, Cho stepped back each time and fired a round into the door,
one shot penetrating O’Dell’s black fleece jacket but missing his body.
“It’s kind of crazy to think that you have 1 1/2 or 2
inches of wood between you and a person with a gun who just killed half your
classmates,” said O’Dell, who is working at a veterinary clinic for the
summer.
