LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - What details are available is that a gunman shot and killed a Virginia Tech University police officer. Police say that a second person was later found dead.

Police at a news conference have said that the second body was that of a white male and that he was not shot by police. A weapon was found nearby, they said.

Police would not officially comment on whether the second person was the gunman, but authorities television journalists that they believed the second victim was the man who shot the campus officer.

Police say the gunman apparently walked up to the scene during a traffic stop and shot the officer.

A campus-wide alert has since been lifted. Montgomery County schools lifted a lockdown and allowed pupils to begin heading home.

University President Charles W. Steger called the incident "a wanton act of violence"

Few students were outside because final exams had been scheduled for Friday and most students were indoors studying, Steger said. Friday's exams have been canceled. Counseling and support were being arranged for students and faculty and their families. Steger says that the shootings were "very traumatic because of the past."

The campus was the scene of the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history, when 33 people, including the mentally ill gunman, were killed on the Virginia Tech campus on April 16, 2007.

The shooting Thursday came the same day as Virginia Tech was appealing a $55,000 fine by the U.S. Education Department in connection with the university's response to the 2007 rampage.

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