Virginia tech university posted the alert on its website and its official Twitter account. The Roanoke Times also reported that the university sounded its emergency sirens and issued an emergency alert by phone and email.

faced a scare Thursday as authorities ordered a campus lockdown after three youths reported seeing a man carrying what they believed to be a gun concealed by a cloth. Alerts were issued. Classes were canceled. Students were urged to stay indoors. And for more than five hours, police from several law enforcement agencies scoured the campus, even releasing a composite sketch as they searched for the reported gunman.

Virginia Tech massacre was a school shooting that took place on April 16, 2007, on the campus of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia, United States. In two separate attacks, approximately two hours apart, the perpetrator, Seung-Hui Cho, killed 32 people and wounded 25 others before committing suicide. The massacre is the deadliest shooting incident by a single gunman in U.S. history.

Update information: they don’t have any indication that there is a “gunman” at the school, only a man with a gun, as one of our commenters pointed out.