Deadliest shooting spree in U.S. history

Its hard to imagine.

At least 30 innocent people were killed Monday during a shooting rampage at Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg, Va.

The gunman was also killed.

Apparently, the gunman opened fire in a dorm about 7:15 a.m. that morning, and later went to an engineering classroom building to continue the rampage.

Initially, only one person was reported killed and the others wounded. That was tragic enough.

But just after 11 a.m. the university shocked the nation with the announcement that at least 21 had died. It was unbelievable.

The news got worse at the day wore on and the death toll reached 30. And that may not be the final number.

Its the deadliest shooting spree in the U.S. history.

Before that, Texas held the grim record.

On Aug. 1, 1966, student and U.S. Marine Corps veteran Charles Whitman gathered a collection of weapons, ammunition and supplies and ascended to the observation deck of the Texas Tower at the University of Texas in Austin.

By the time officers made it to the top of the tower and took out Whitman, 17 were dead or dying, including Whitmans wife and mother, killed earlier, and an unborn child. One wounded man eventually died in 2001 of complications directly stemming the shooting.

More than 30 others were wounded. The dead and wounded included members of a Texarkana family.

Then on Oct. 16, 1991, a man named George Hennard drove his truck into the Lubys Cafeteria in Killeen and opened fire. He left 23 dead and 20 wounded before turning his gun on himself.

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University is Virginia Techs full name. For years it shared a connection with Texas in that it is one of only two schools in the U.S., the other being Texas A&M, with a corps of cadets a full-time military training component located on campus.

Now, tragically, Virginia Tech can claim kinship with Texas in another way as well.