Virginia Tech officer's widow: 'Somebody took our life from us'

Virginia Tech officer's widow: 'Somebody took our life from us'
Deriek Crouse was her first true love and her best friend, and in the shadow of his death, Tina Crouse grapples with grief and anger.
By Matt Chittum

December 11, 2011

The bullet that tore through Deriek Crouse on Thursday didn’t stop in his lifeless body.

It carried on and on, ripping through a home and family he had been after his whole life and only recently got, breaking the heart of a woman to whom he was a first and only real love, and bringing a crashing end to what had been a working-class fairy tale of a romance.

Crouse, 39, a Virginia Tech police officer, was killed seemingly at random during a routine traffic stop on the Tech campus by a part-time Radford University student, Ross Truett Ashley, 22, of Partlow, who soon after killed himself.

“Nobody knows what he lost,” said Crouse’s widow, Tina, 37, from her Christiansburg townhome Saturday morning. “Somebody took our life from us.”

Deriek met the woman who would become his first wife, Marie Thomas, in Galax.

He joined the Army to save himself from himself, Tina said. His life was on a wrong path and headed for trouble.

He spent three years in the Army, mostly at Fort Hood, Texas, where he and Marie had their only son, Dustin.

They returned to Galax, where Deriek installed vinyl siding for a while, then worked at National Textiles. He also joined the Army Reserve.

About 2002, he and Marie separated, and shortly after he had moved out, he was deployed to the war in Iraq.
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Facebook Virginia Tech blogger ordered by judge to join military

Judge orders man to join military

By Scott Johnson - The Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser
Posted : Friday Aug 27, 2010 13:00:19 EDT

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — A judge ordered an Alabama man to join the military as a condition for of his probation for a provocative Facebook message about the mass killing at Virginia Tech.

Zachary Lambert pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of harassing communications, and a judge in Montgomery placed the 23-year-old man on probation.
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Judge orders man to join military

Reminder of the violence that she survived

Virginia Tech Commemorates 2007 Shootings
Three Years After Massacre Claimed 32 Lives, Survivors Remember Tragedy in Differing Ways

(CBS/AP) Heidi Miller worked hard to ensure that her time at Virginia Tech would be defined by her academic achievements and experiences, not by the massacre during her freshman year that claimed 32 lives and left her wounded in 2007.

After a long summer of physical rehabilitation back home in Harrisonburg, Miller returned to Tech the next semester.

She is preparing to graduate next month with a 3.7 grade-point average, a double major in international studies and geography, and a minor in French.

She will remember many of the highlights, such as her trips to Europe and New Zealand.

Even though she believes she has done her best to make the most of her time in college, she is ready to move on from Blacksburg, a place that also has served as a harsh and frustrating reminder of the violence that she survived.
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Virginia Tech Commemorates 2007 Shootings

Police seek suspects in Virginia Tech students' deaths

Police seek suspects in Virginia Tech students' deaths
The bodies of two sophomores with bullet wounds were found in a campground area of the Jefferson National Forest.
By Shawna Morrison


The bodies of two young Virginia Tech students from central Virginia were found Thursday in a remote area of Montgomery County, and authorities are considering their deaths to be a double homicide.

The victims are David Lee Metzler, 19, of Lynchburg and Heidi Lynn Childs, 18, of Forest, according to the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office.

In the Virginia Tech student directory, Metzler's major is listed as industrial and systems engineering. Childs is listed as a biochemistry major. Both were sophomores.

Sheriff Tommy Whitt said both victims appeared to have been shot where they had parked in a day-use area of Caldwell Fields. The area is a large group campground in the Jefferson National Forest more than eight miles down Craig Creek Road, where a shooting range and Camp Tuk-A-Way are located, off U.S. 460.
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http://www.roanoke.com/news/nrv/wb/216886
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Psychologist: Venting about a trauma not always healthy

Psychologist: Venting about a trauma not always healthy
by Susan Brink - Aug. 5, 2008 12:00 AM
Los Angeles Times
"The more (Virginia Tech students) can talk about what they've lived through, the more that they can be encouraged to emote . . . that gives them some security and insulation against burying those feelings and then having them surprise them later in life."

- Keith Ablow, psychiatrist, on NBC's Today, April 17, 2007

In the aftermath of the massacre of 32 students and faculty at Virginia Tech on April 16, 2007, Ablow was simply voicing post-Freudian conventional wisdom: When something horrible happens, vent.

None of this negates the value of talk therapy or of expressing thoughts and emotions when it feels right. But the new research suggests wide use of clinical techniques proven to help in some situations - such as a couple in marital trouble or a depressed person exploring emotions with a therapist - has gotten ahead of the evidence on the best course of mental-health care after a disaster.

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The key is to be there if they want to vent, talk, cry and give them the ability to do it. If you force them, it doesn't do much good at all.