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Virginia Tech shooting victims remembered at memorials

By The Associated Press
Posted 3:45AM on Saturday 21st April 2007 ( 18 years ago )
<p>EVANS, Ga. _ Some 100 members of the Virginia Tech marching band are to participate in a memorial service Saturday for bandmate Ryan Clark, one of the first victims of Seung-Hui Cho. Services also are planned in Virginia for two other victims of the massacre.</p><p>Clark, a 22-year-old native of Martinez, Ga., was among the first to die in Monday's massacre that left 33 people dead, including the gunman. Clark was a resident adviser in the dormitory where the shooting spree started.</p><p>Clark was in his fifth year in the Marching Virginians band at Virginia Tech, which traveled to this small eastern Georgia town for the service at Lakeside High School, where Clark and his twin brother, Bryan, graduated in 2002.</p><p>Mourners were gathering at the high school Saturday afternoon, including Rhonda Pirtle, a woman from metro Atlanta who sported a Virginia Tech football jersey _ despite having no connection to the school or to Clark.</p><p>"Every time I see Ryan Clark on TV, I think about my son, while he's at school," at Louisiana State University, she said. "The students deserve to be safe. It's going to be a tough day."</p><p>Clark's funeral is planned for Monday at Tabernacle Baptist Church in Augusta.</p><p>Services were also planned Saturday in Virginia for Emily Hilscher, who was killed around the same time and in the same dorm as Clark, and for Reema Samaha, one of 30 students Cho killed more than two hours later at Norris Hall, a classroom building.</p><p>As families said goodbye to their loved ones, investigators continued to look for clues into Cho's motives.</p><p>Authorities sought Cho's cell phone records on the chance he warned someone about what would become the nation's worst mass shooting in modern history.</p>

http://accesswdun.com/article/2007/4/101262

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