emails-- Email indicated a shooting, but not a murder?

The email the university admin sent out to students seems tepid in this report-- given that a student was MURDERED! -- they merely say there "was a shooting"... a "shooting"?... holy cats... a student was killed-- there's a killer on the loose..

"At 9:26, the first e-mail alert went out to the Virginia Tech community, faculty and students, about the earlier incident at West Ambler Johnston. The university leadership team had been meeting for nearly an hour by then, going over what they knew and what they didn’t know, and how they should handle the situation. The university police chief, Wendell Flinchum, had come in with the latest news on the investigation. It still looked to them like an isolated incident. The e-mail popped up on computers across the campus. John Ellerbe, a senior history major from Woodbridge, had just gotten out of the shower and was preparing for his 10 a.m. class when he read it: “A shooting occurred at West Ambler Johnston earlier this morning. Police are on the scene and are investigating. The university community is urged to be cautious and are asked to contact Virginia Tech Police if you observe anything suspicious or with information on the case. . . . We will post as soon as we have more information.” [+]

The campus speakers were not used at this point. I've seen elsewhere that campus speakers were used for weather reports. Weather? I also was given the idea of a siren to work with-- since air raid sirens in decades gone by were pretty effective at warning people of danger and to stay indoors and locked. I also think its idiotic that the u would depend on emails to alert people.. shows that we've taken some wrong turns with technology-- campus radio would have been better-- or campus tv-- closed circuit cable-- maybe campus tvs/moniters all over campus-- like tv's at airports showing arrivals and departures...

But an email indicating a "shooting"? -- and not a "murder"?