Friends and family are still trying to understand why 22 year old Ross Truett Ashley shot and killed Officer Derek Crouse. Ashley, it seems, later shot himself after fleeing on foot.
Nic Robinson said “Ross wasn’t that kind of person. He was friendly, nice,”. “Obviously, he had his bad days, but it was the same as anyone else having those days.”
Ashley has been described as a hardcore football player with vast knowledge of the Bible. Not as “…some kind of monster that people are trying to depict him as”. “He was always very nice, I would say that he was reserved, but I wouldn’t call him a loner,” said 22 year old Kyle Carlson
Over the summer Ashley broke up with his girlfriend. According to her, he did not seem to take it anymore or less hard than anyone else would in that situation. She said that although he had family problems, he never spoke much about them, nor gave any indication that it was anything out of the ordinary.
Friend Matt Daily said that he and Ashley had visited the gun range a few times together, but had not fired his weapon for the past several months because he was unable to purchase ammunition.
It is worth noting, though there is no clear connection, that Ashley fired his weapon at the same range as Seung-Hui Cho, the gunman who killed 32 people before killing himself on the campus in 2007.
Ashley was not a student at VA Tech had no known prior association with Derek Crouse.
