Questions lingered over whether campus police should have issued an immediate campus-wide warning of a killer on the loose and locked down the campus after the first burst of gunfire.

Police said that after the first shooting, in which two students were killed, they believed that it was a domestic dispute, and that the gunman had fled the campus. Police went looking for a young man, Karl David Thornhill, who had once shot guns at a firing range with the roommate of one of the victims. But police said Thornhill is no longer under suspicion.

Also Wednesday, Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine declared Friday a statewide day of mourning, and asked the state to pause at noon to pray for the victims. Montgomery County Public Schools also said they would remain closed for the rest of the week.

With classes canceled through the week, the Virginia Tech campus continued to empty Wednesday. But students from other schools came to pay their respects, visiting the makeshift shrines of candles, flowers and placards — all thick with prayers and condolences.

"I know that if something happened to the college I go to, they would have done the same," said Ashley Johnston, 20, who drove 50 miles from Wytheville Community College to attend an evening prayer vigil on the Tech campus.

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Associated Press writers Allen G. Breed, Vicki Smith, Sue Lindsey and Justin Pope in Blacksburg, Va., Matt Barakat in Richmond, Va., Colleen Long and Tom Hays in New York, and Lara Jakes Jordan in Washington, D.C. contributed to this report.