US:Everything went silent at Virginia Tech and across the state of Virginia at noon yesterday as mourners stood to remember the victims of Monday's campus massacre.
At the university, a bell tolled in memory of the dead; throughout the state people wore the college colours of burgundy and orange as they observed an official day of mourning.
Four days after the worst mass shooting in US history, which left 33 people dead, Virginia governor Timothy Kaine urged staff and students at Virginia Tech to "stay strong" and look forward to a brighter day. "We all suffer, we all grieve. There is no escape from that for any of us," he said.
One by one, 32 Virginia Tech students read out a single name, one for each of the victims, but nobody spoke the name of Cho Seung-Hui (23), the gunman who took his own life after the murders.
Mr Kaine has appointed a six-person independent panel that includes former homeland security secretary Tom Ridge to look into how university authorities and police handled the shootings.
Mr Ridge said they would look into how students were notified of the dangers, especially the two-hour time lapse between the first shootings and the first official e-mail warnings. "This was out- and-out murder," he said. "This was a horribly, horribly deranged young man."
The panel will also seek to determine if the university could have done more to stop Cho, who was sent to a psychiatric hospital more than a year ago and was pronounced an imminent danger to himself after he was accused of stalking two women and photographing female students in class with his mobile phone.
Mr Kaine asked: "What was his interaction with the mental health system? What kind of treatment did he receive or did he not receive? What were the warning signs, who was warned, what was done? What did he do to acquire these weapons? How did he learn to use the weapons?
"We need to find out everything we can about this young man."
Victims' relatives have condemned US networks for broadcasting excerpts from a video testament left by Cho, in which he compares himself to Christ and rails against rich "brats" with Mercedes Benzes, gold necklaces, cognac and trust funds.
As families began burying their dead, investigators looked into the warning signs in Cho's past, including two stalking complaints against him and a psychiatric hospital visit in which he was found to be a danger to himself. Police filed a search warrant for a laptop and mobile phone used by one of the first victims, Emily Hilscher, who was shot in a dormitory.
"The computer would be one way the suspect could have communicated with the victim," the warrant said, but it offered no basis for a belief that Cho might have been in contact with her.
A Virginia state police spokeswoman said investigators were "making some really great progress" into determining how and why the shootings happened. ( Additional reporting: AP)