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When Adam Kress left McComas Hall on the campus of Virginia Tech at around 9:45 a.m. Monday, he heard sirens screaming.

It was the first sign something was wrong, but he didn't know how wrong until he got to class and a professor told him the school was being shut down because of a shooting.

A gunman was on the loose, he was told.

Kress, a 2003 graduate of Attleboro High School, left the campus and went to his apartment about 1.5 miles away where he watched the horrible truth unfold on TV.

When all was said and done, 32 people had been killed and at least 26 were injured in a bloody rampage by a lone gunman. The shooter killed himself, bringing the death toll to 33 in the worst mass murder in the nation's history.

It was devastating, Kress said.

"I'm just in a state of shock," he said in a telephone interview with The Sun Chronicle late Monday. "I still can't believe this is happening at my campus. It's shocking and it's appalling."

Kress, 21, a senior mechanical engineering student, said the slaughter is especially mind-numbing because the campus, located in Blacksburg, a town of about 40,000 people in southwest Virginia, is considered a haven. Until Monday it was a peaceful place, he said. "Everyone has thought of this is a really safe campus," he said.

Meanwhile, a fellow Attleboro resident, 22-year-old Jonathan Skinner, also a member of the AHS class of 2003 and an emergency medical technician in the student-run rescue service at Virginia Tech, was part of the emergency response.

His mom, Lori Skinner, heard about a single shooting at the school and knew he may be called to assist.

But when she heard about the mass killings, she feared for her son's safety.

"I knew he'd be responding to the first shooting, but when I heard about the rest I was beside myself," she said. "I was in a panic and I couldn't get a hold of him."

Finally the two connected in a hurried call.

"He just said he was OK and hung up," Lori Skinner said. "He was very busy." She said the ugliness of the crime stands in stark contrast with the beauty of the school.

"I think its the prettiest campus I've seen," Lori Skinner said. "It's hard to believe. I feel for everyone down there."

Two other Virginia Tech students from Attleboro, Richard Moore, 22, and Vygngley Moore, 21, both graduates of Attleboro High School, are also OK.

Their father, Richard Moore said he called the cell phones of both sons when he heard about the rampage.

Vygngley's call went to voice mail, but Richard picked up. Vygngley responded a short time later.

It was unnerving time, the young men's dad said.

"It was very scary, very unsettling not knowing what was going on," Richard Moore Sr. said.

The rampage began around 7:15 a.m. when two people were killed in West Ambler Johnston Hall, a dormitory for 895 students across the street from McComas which houses a gym where Kress begins his day with a workout three times a week.

He arrived about 8 a.m. By the time he got there Monday two students had already been killed at West Ambler, but he didn't know it.

When he left the gym around 9:45 a.m. he noticed police cars at the dorm, but that alone was not unusual, he said.

There are often patrol cars there for traffic control and routine reasons, Kress said.

But when Kress got to Derring Hall across campus where he was scheduled to attend a class, he heard about the shootings from a professor and was told the campus was in lockdown.

Unknown to both, a brutal slaughter was under way or had just occurred at Norris Hall, a few hundred yards from Derring.

The attacks may have just ended as he spoke to his professor around 10 a.m., he said.

"I wasn't close enough to hear anything taking place," he said.

Norris is where some engineering courses are taught so Kress, who has taken classes in the building, is certain he'll know some of the victims.

"I expect to know at least one or two people," he said.

But for now all he can do is wonder sadly who that will be.

"Myself and all of my friends are playing the waiting game," Kress said.

GEORGE W. RHODES can be reached at 508-236-0432 or at grhodes@thesunchronicle.com.