The family of the Virginia Tech shooter issued a heartbroken apology last night for his "unspeakable actions" as the campus emptied and memorial services began for some of the 32 victims of Monday's massacre.
"We feel hopeless, helpless and lost," the family, which remained in seclusion, said in a statement that referred to the shooter as Seung-Hui Cho. "He has made the world weep. We are living a nightmare.
"No words can express our sadness that 32 innocent people lost their lives this week in such a terrible, senseless tragedy. We are heartbroken," the statement read as the country marked a day of mourning for the victims of the worst mass shooting in modern US history.
Thousands of grieving students headed home to family as a tragic week drew to a close, and mourning shifted to hometowns across the United States and around the world with the first funerals for students and teachers killed in the rampage.
A few blocks from campus, Blacksburg Presbyterian Church filled to overflowing for the service for Kevin Granata, one of four teachers killed on Monday by the gunman, identified by police and university officials as Cho Seung-Hui.
"It was a tough one. Very tough, very tough. Unimaginable," the Rev. Alex Evans said of the service as mourners wearing the orange and maroon of Virginia Tech poured out of the stone church, many still wiping away tears.
Granata, a biomechanics professor, lacrosse coach and father of three, was killed when he ran into the hallway to help students when the shooting began.
Moments of silence were observed yesterday on the trading floors of financial markets in New York and Chicago and church bells rang out from coast to coast to mark the tragedy.
Cho (23) a mentally disturbed English major, killed himself before police could intervene in the shooting spree on this sprawling campus in the mountains of southwest Virginia.
Four days after the attack, and on the eighth anniversary of the shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado in which 15 people died, a heightened sense of alert gripped the United States, especially at educational institutions.
Security alerts involving guns, bombs and suspects with explosives forced the evacuation yesterday of schools in Colorado and California, the Arizona state Capitol and a NASA building in Houston where a gunman killed a hostage and then himself.