Westborough grad, a Virginia Tech student, is safe

Title

Westborough grad, a Virginia Tech student, is safe

Description

By Galen Moore/Daily News staff
GHS
Fri Apr 20, 2007, 12:55 AM EDT

WESTBOROUGH - Andrew Dyche is safe, but for 30 terrifying minutes Monday his mother, Amy Belue, didn't know it.

Dyche, a 2003 graduate of Westborough High School, will graduate from Virginia Tech in June. He was at home in his off-campus apartment the morning fellow student Cho Seung-Hui shot 32 people, then turned a gun on himself.

On Monday, after learning of the killings from a co-worker over the Internet, it took Belue, who now lives in Colorado, 30 minutes of trying and re-trying jammed telephone circuits to reach her son. When they got through, the campus was already locked down, he told her.

Dyche left Blacksburg, Va., on Wednesday to stay with high school friends at the University of Connecticut. The atmosphere at Virginia Tech, where both his mother and father also went to school, was too much to bear, he said.

"Our campus is still swarmed with reporters, news media and cops," he said. "No one's really leaving their apartments."

The university canceled classes for the week.

Dyche, who first learned of the shootings when his roommate called him from a bus that had been stopped, didn't know any of the students who were killed or injured Monday.

For that, he feels lucky.

The week's events came as a shock, but they won't change his opinion of the school, he said. When he goes back, he will feel as safe as he could hope to feel anywhere, he said.

Belue, who moved with her husband, Dyche's stepfather, to Colorado in 2004, said she still feels a strong bond with the college she attended 30 years ago.

"We just love the community down there," she said. "It's so sad this is a part of the history now."

Dyche said though he knows there will be questions, he hopes students won't turn to blaming authorities for what happened.

"It's kind of difficult that (Cho) took his own life, because now it feels like we need to shift the blame somewhere else," Dyche said. "He's gone and you can't take it out on him."

(Galen Moore can be reached at 508-490-7453 or gmoore@cnc.com.)

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Original Source: Milford, MA - The Milford Daily News
<a href="http://www.milforddailynews.com/homepage/x663839027">http://www.milforddailynews.com/homepage/x663839027</a>

Licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0</a>.

Creator

Galen Moore / The Milford Daily News staff

Date

2007-07-17

Contributor

Brent Jesiek

Rights

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0

Language

eng

Citation

Galen Moore / The Milford Daily News staff, “Westborough grad, a Virginia Tech student, is safe,” The April 16 Archive, accessed March 29, 2024, https://april16archive.org/items/show/762.