A look at some Virginia Tech victims

Daniel O'Neil

O'Neil, a 22-year-old graduate student in engineering, played guitar and wrote songs he posted on his MySpace page and a Web site, http://www.residenthippy.com/.

Friend Steve Craveiro described him as smart, responsible and a hard worker, someone who never got into trouble.

"He would come home from school over the summer and talk about projects, about building bridges and stuff like that," Craveiro said. "He loved his family. He was pretty much destined to be extremely successful. He just didn't deserve to have happen what happened."

By four days after the shootings, the songs on his MySpace page had been played more than 65,000 times since he was murdered, and many listeners left messages to say how touched they were.

His friends said they would honor O'Neil with a memorial fund and CD of his music _ acoustic songs about love and the range of human emotion, delicately sung by O'Neil with occasional backup vocals by his friends.

Amanda Burbank, one the people organizing the CD and memorial fund, said she thinks his music has struck a chord because it's become representative of what people have lost.

"It's really helping people heal," she said.

O'Neil graduated in 2002 from Lincoln High School in Rhode Island and graduated from Lafayette College in Easton, Pa., before heading to Virginia Tech, where he was also a teaching assistant, Craveiro said.

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Juan Ramon Ortiz

Ortiz, 26, who was from Puerto Rico, was teaching a class as part of his graduate program in civil engineering at Virginia Tech.

The family's neighbors in the San Juan suburb of Bayamon remembered Ortiz as a quiet, dedicated son who decorated his parents' one-story concrete house each Christmas and played in a salsa band with his father on weekends.

"He was an extraordinary son, what any father would have wanted," said Ortiz's father, also named Juan Ramon Ortiz.

Marilys Alvarez, 22, heard Ortiz's mother scream from the house next door when she learned of her son's death. Alvarez said she had wanted to study in the United States, but was now reconsidering.

"Here the violence is bad, but you don't see that," she said. "It's really sad. You can't go anywhere now."

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Minal Panchal

Panchal, 26, wanted to be an architect like her father, who died four years ago.

She was very keen to go to the United States for postgraduate studies and thrilled when she gained admission last year, said Chetna Parekh, a friend who lives in the bustling middle-class Mumbai neighborhood of Borivali, India, where Panchal lived before coming to Virginia Tech. "She was a brilliant student and very hardworking. She was focussed on getting her degree and doing well."

Panchal was worried about her mother, Hansa, living alone and wanted her to come to the U.S., neighbor Jayshree Ajmane said. Hansa left earlier this month for New Jersey, where her sister and brother-in-law live.

Ajmane called Panchal a bright, polite girl who would help the neighborhood children with their schoolwork.

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Erin Peterson

Peterson, a high school classmate of the gunman, was 6-foot-1 and played center for the school's girls basketball team, helping lead it to a district championship.

"She could do a layup on anyone," said Anna Richter, a high school teammate. She recalled how Peterson's parents attended nearly every game and were among the most enthusiastic fans.

Pat Deegan, Peterson's high school coach, said he couldn't remember a better leader.

Peterson, 18, and shooting victim Reema Samaha both graduated from Westfield (Va.) High School last year, according to Barbara Burke, a spokeswoman for Fairfax County Public Schools.

"She was just a super child," William Lloyd, Erin's godfather, told the Washington City Paper. "Her and her dad, man, you couldn't separate them. He lost a child from cancer _ a daughter, 8 years old. A week later, (Erin) was born."

Lloyd said that Erin and her father, Grafton Peterson, did part ways on one thing: pro-football allegiances. "She was a Redskin," he said. "He was a Cowboy."

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Michael Pohle

Pohle, 23, of Flemington, N.J., was expected to graduate in a few weeks with a degree in biological sciences, said Craig Blanton, Hunterdon Central's vice principal during the 2002 school year, when Pohle graduated.

"He had a bunch of job interviews and was all set to start his post-college life," Blanton said.

At the high school, Pohle played on the football and lacrosse teams.

One of his old lacrosse coaches, Bob Shroeder, described him as "a good kid who did everything that good kids do."

"He tried to please," Shroeder said. "He was just a great kid."

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Julia Pryde

Pryde, a graduate student from Middletown, N.J., was an "exceptional student academically and personally," said Saied Mostaghimi, chairman of the biological systems and engineering department where Pryde was seeking her master's degree.

"She was the nicest person you ever met," Mostaghimi said.

Last summer, Pryde had traveled to Ecuador to research water quality issues with a professor. She planned to return this summer for follow-up work, Mostaghimi said.

A 2001 graduate of Middletown North High School, Pryde was on the school's swim team and played softball in two town leagues.

Her hometown has been touched by tragedy before, losing 37 current and former residents in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

"The town pulls together in these situations. Everything that we can do for this family, we'll see what can be done," Middletown Mayor Gerard P. Scharfenberger said.

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Mary Karen Read

Read was born in South Korea into an Air Force family and lived in Texas and California before settling in the northern Virginia suburb of Annandale.

Read, 19, considered a handful of colleges, including nearby George Mason University, before choosing Virginia Tech. It was a popular destination among her Annandale High School classmates, according to her aunt Karen Kuppinger.

She had yet to declare a major.

"I think she wanted to try to spread her wings," said Kuppinger, of Rochester, N.Y.

Kuppinger said her niece had struggled adjusting to Tech's sprawling 2,600-acre campus. But she had recently begun making friends and looking into a sorority.

Kuppinger said the family started calling Read as news reports surfaced.

"After three or four hours passed and she hadn't picked up her cell phone or answered her e-mail ... we did get concerned," Kuppinger said. "We honestly thought she would pop up."

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Reema Samaha

Samaha was a dancer, whether it was the classical ballet she studied as a child, the belly dance moves she used for a high school talent show last year or just spinning around the living room with her mother at their home in a Washington suburb.

"She just danced, and laughed and smiled," said Linda D'Orazio, a neighbor.

Both she and her killer graduated from Westfield High School in Chantilly, Va. _ Samaha in 2006 and Cho in 2003. But Samaha's neighbors and friends said they didn't think she knew Cho.

Samaha, 18, was a member of the high school's dance team. She had recently taken up belly dancing, a nod to her family's roots in Lebanon, which the Samahas visited each summer, friends said.

Watching her on stage was captivating, they said.

"She was just beautiful and when you watched her, I thought she was one of the most gorgeous girls in the world inside and out," said Lauren Walters, a Westfield graduate who is now enrolled at Clemson University.

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Waleed Mohammed Shaalan

Shaalan, of Zagazig, Egypt, was married and the father of a 1-year-old son, according to the Muslim Students Association at Virginia Tech.

"He was the simplest and nicest guy I ever knew. We would be studying for our exams and he would go buy a cake and make tea for us," Fahad Pasha, Waleed's roommate, said on the association's Web site.

Shaalan, 32, was a doctoral student in civil engineering, the university said.

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Leslie Sherman

Sherman, an avid traveler, was headed to Russia this summer to study, said her grandmother, Gerry Adams.

Sherman, a sophomore history and international studies student from Springfield, Va., had visited Boston and London with her mother; she visited her grandparents in Kennewick, Wash., last month for spring break, Adams said.

Sherman _ who was named after her grandfather, Leslie _ loved reading and socializing with her "gaggle" of more than 15 cousins spread out at colleges across the country, Adams said. She text-messaged one of them the evening before she died.

"She was so happy. Life was going so well for her," said Adams, who described the family as "just beside themselves" with grief.

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Maxine Turner

Turner, a senior chemical engineering student, had finished her required credits and was preparing for her May graduation, but took German as an elective, said her father, Paul Turner. The 22-year-old was shot in the German class.

"She was very excited _ she was very excited about school in general," her father said.

Turner, from Vienna, Va., was accepted by a handful of high profile schools, including Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. But she was determined to be a Virginia Tech Hokie, her father said.

"We tried to convince her to go elsewhere. When you get accepted to Johns Hopkins, it's a very prestigious school," he said. "But no, she wanted to go to Virginia Tech."

Turner recently helped found a chapter of Alpha Omega Epsilon, a sorority for women in engineering. She had accepted a chemical engineering job with W.L. Gore & Associates, in Elkton, Md.

"It's a terrible loss," her father said Wednesday, weeping. "I cannot understand the legislators in this country, not putting in laws that protect people."

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Nicole White

The 20-year-old international studies major with striking, long red hair and a deep faith in God was a YMCA lifeguard and an emergency medical technician with her local volunteer rescue squad while in high school.

White's family was told that she was holding someone else's ID when her body was found _ as if she had been helping that person and grabbed the ID as she moved away, said Tim Piland, senior pastor at White's church, Nansemond River Baptist Church in Suffolk, Va.

"It meant a lot to her family," Piland said. "It was very much in keeping with her personality."

An international studies major, White also volunteered at an animal shelter and at a battered women's shelter while in Blacksburg. She was believed to have been killed in German class.

The family lives in Isle of Wight County, just outside the small town of Smithfield, Va.

Her parents, Mike and Tricia White, want people to know that "their daughter loved life, loved people and loved the Lord," Piland said.