Q & A with Derek O’Dell

‘You really wish it wouldn’t happen again’: Q & A with Derek O’Dell, victim of the 2007 Virginia Tech shootings
Derek O’Dell, now a vet student at Tech, says he copes with hearing about other mass shootings by learning the facts about them.
By Tonia Moxley The Roanoke Times

BLACKSBURG — Aside from a few scattered memorials to those lost at Virginia Tech on April 16, 2007, the signs of the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history have mostly faded from campus.

With time, many of the students affected by the tragedy have also departed. The last of the undergraduates enrolled at the time of the shooting are expected to graduate next year, including some of the survivors, university spokesman Larry Hincker said.

Of the 26 students injured during Seung-Hui Cho’s rampage, seven graduated in May 2007. The other 19 all returned to finish their degrees.

Among them was Virginia native Derek O’Dell, now 22 and a first-year student at the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine on the Tech campus.

Shot in the arm, O’Dell survived the shootings at Norris Hall, where 30 students and faculty were skilled. Two other students were slain in West Ambler Johnston.

The first survivor to speak publicly about his experience in 207 Norris Hall, where he and fellow students held the door shut to keep Cho from returning a second time, O’Dell has become an icon of the tragedy and its aftermath.

In an interview at his kitchen table in Blacksburg earlier this month, O’Dell talked about the resilience of the Tech community, his healing and returning to campus to pursue his dream of becoming a veterinarian.

Here is the full interview.