Collegiate Times

The apartment building on the 1000 Block of E. Main St. in Radford that Ashley lived in, as seen from across the street.

RADFORD — Students at Radford University were puzzled Saturday afternoon about how, and why, one of their students could have been involved in a murder.

Part-time Radford student Ross Ashley stole a Mercedes from a person working in the Gilbert Real Estate office in the 600 block of Calhoun Street Wednesday afternoon. He then allegedly shot and killed Virginia Tech Police Department officer Deriek Crouse before killing himself on Thursday afternoon.

Radford students didn’t know the shooter was a member of their community until Friday night.

They received an email to “avoid the Virginia Tech area” on Thursday afternoon.

Students did not receive that email until 1:50 p.m. Thursday, almost two hours after Crouse was shot.

Junior Laura Enderson, who is the editor in chief of The Tartan, the Radford student newspaper, said that the entire alert system was not activated. Students only received emails but did not receive text messages. The campus was never locked down.

Meghan McNeice, a journalism major from Richmond who is The Tartan’s managing editor, said students were paying more attention to a fight in a dining hall on campus that happened that afternoon.

“It wasn’t a direct threat,” McNeice said, so the Radford community didn’t really pay attention to the events more than looking at Twitter.

“I kept an eye on it,” Enderson, who is a journalism major from Bedford, said, “but I wasn’t freaking out about it.”

After she received the announcement on Friday night that Ashley was a Radford student, she and her staff quickly worked to publish a story about him on their website, rutartan.com.

Students received emails at 3:30 p.m., 4:50 p.m. and 5:15 p.m. on Thursday. The first email advised the situation was the same, the second advised the lockdown at Tech had been lifted, and the third gave students the number of the counseling center. Students also received an email at 4:20 p.m. Friday informing them of the candlelight vigil that took place on Tech’s campus, and they received an email at 6:05 p.m. Friday that identified Ashley as the alleged shooter.

McNeice realized after the fact that Ashley’s robbery had taken place just across the street from her off-campus apartment.

She also lives in the 600 block of Calhoun Street. While she didn’t see the robbery happen, she heard about it after the fact and felt uneasy when she found out that the robbery was connected with Thursday’s shooting.

“We see that Mercedes all the time,” she said.

Many students at Radford had mixed responses Saturday afternoon to Thursday’s shootings and to the announcement that Ashley, the alleged student, was a member of their community.

Radford is smaller than Tech, with only about 10,000 total students enrolled. Despite its size, many students said they don’t all know one another. Many people did not know Ashley.

“We’re not as small and close-knit as media makes us look,” Enderson said. “Off-campus don’t all know each other and they don’t know on-campus people.”

Students who did know Ashley seemed surprised that he had allegedly committed the murder.

A woman who answered a door at the apartment building where Ashley lived expressed anger with media presence in her building.

The woman said she thought Ashley had seemed “totally normal” and “not crazy like you’re looking for.”

She also said she had asked other members of the media to stay away from the building.

There was a sign up in the building with the letterhead of Gilbert Real Estate on it, reminding residents of routine practices of renewing leases and leaving heat on above 55 degrees during winter break.

McNeice said that based on what she had heard, nobody who knew Ashley expected him to allegedly commit murder.

“I feel like it’s an isolated event,” she said. “I don’t think anyone expected a problem.”

Students on campus Saturday afternoon were gearing up for exams. Unlike Tech, Radford does not give students a reading day. Their last day of classes was Friday and their first day of exams is Monday.

Even though students were busy thinking about exams, many of them were also talking about Thursday’s shootings.

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A version of this article appeared in the Dec 11 issue of the Collegiate Times.