RICHMOND, Virginia (AP) The state Supreme Court on Thursday reversed a jury's wrongful death verdict against the state stemming from the April 16, 2007, killing of 32 students and faculty at Virginia Tech in the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.
The justices wrote that the state had no
duty to warn students of the potential acts of the case's lone gunman, who initially shot two in a dormitory. Hours later, he killed 30 more people, then himself.
The parents of Erin Nicole Peterson and Julia Kathleen Pryde sued the state for negligence, contending that university officials should have warned the Blacksburg campus of the first shootings before Seung-Hui Cho killed the others, including Pryde and Peterson, at the classroom building Norris Hall.
Jurors in Montgomery County ruled in March 2012 and agreed with the families, awarding each $4 million. A judge later reduced the award to the state cap of $100,000 for each family.
The state argued that law enforcement officials believed the first shootings were the result of a domestic dispute and they concluded the larger campus was not at risk, even though the gunman remained on large.
