## Facts

- Two Virginia Tech students were killed in a dormitory shooting on April 16, 2007, around 7:30 a.m.
- Multiple law-enforcement agencies investigated and concluded, based on the scene, that the incident appeared isolated, domestic, and targeted, and that others were not in danger.
- Investigators developed a suspect theory focused on the female victim’s boyfriend and issued a BOLO; when located, he provided an alibi.
- Before the later attack, Virginia Tech’s leadership sent a campus-wide email reporting the dorm shooting and advising vigilance, but did not state there was an ongoing campus-wide threat.
- Around 9:45 a.m., the same gunman began a mass shooting at Norris Hall, killing numerous people, including Erin Peterson and Julia Pryde.
- Only after the Norris Hall shooting began did the university issue a message warning that a shooter was at large and advising people to shelter in place.
- The estates of Peterson and Pryde sued the Commonwealth under the Virginia Tort Claims Act, alleging Commonwealth employees at Virginia Tech negligently failed to provide a timely and sufficiently specific warning after the first shooting.

## Issues

1. Whether the Commonwealth, through Virginia Tech employees, owed students a duty to warn of third-party criminal acts based on a special relationship.
2. Whether, assuming such a special relationship, the risk of a subsequent mass shooting was sufficiently known, reasonably foreseeable, or presented an imminent probability of injury to create a legal duty to warn before the Norris Hall attack.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court of Virginia reversed the circuit court’s judgment for the plaintiffs.
- The Court assumed without deciding that a special relationship between the Commonwealth (via Virginia Tech) and students existed.
- The Court held that, on the information available between the first and second shootings, the later mass shooting was not known or reasonably foreseeable and did not present an imminent probability of injury.
- Because no duty to warn arose as a matter of law, the Commonwealth was not liable under the Virginia Tort Claims Act for the alleged failure to issue a broader, earlier warning.

## Legal Principles

- Generally, a defendant has no duty to warn or protect others from the criminal acts of third parties.
- A duty to warn based on a special relationship requires that the danger of third-party criminal acts be known or reasonably foreseeable.
- In contexts where courts recognize duties to warn against third-party crimes more narrowly, a duty arises only when there is an imminent probability of injury.
- Duty analysis focuses on what was known and reasonably inferable at the time of the alleged omission, not on later events.

## Conclusion

The court set aside verdicts for wrongful-death plaintiffs because, even assuming a university–student special relationship, the contemporaneous information reasonably supported viewing the initial shooting as isolated and targeted; absent reasonable foreseeability or imminent probability of broader harm, the Commonwealth had no duty to warn students of the later mass attack.


Commonwealth v. Peterson, 286 Va. 349, 749 S.E.2d 307 (Va. 2013)