Two Indian Doctoral Students Executed in Campus Apartment: LSU's New Text System Partly Fails

[LSU activated its emergency text-message notification system -- LSUalert -- on the evening of December 13, 2007, following the discovery of the bodies of two graduate students at the Edward Gay Apartments near the Tiger Band Hall. The alert warned of a shooting in which two LSU community members had been killed, urged students and staff to be cautious and report any suspicious activity to campus police and the Baton Rouge Police Department, and noted that the situation was under investigation and that suspects had not been identified or apprehended. LSU acknowledged in a subsequent statement that the system, which had approximately 8,400 registered users, experienced partial delivery failures -- some subscribers did not receive the alert. The partial failure occurred less than a year after the system was deployed in the wake of the April 2007 Virginia Tech massacre.]

[LSU campus officials and police issued a follow-up communication on December 14, 2007, providing additional details about the murders of Chandrasekhar Reddy Komma and Kiran Kumar Allam. The communication included composite sketches of two or three suspects described as having followed the victims to the apartment. Students were urged to stay alert, avoid walking alone at night, and report any information to LSU Police or Baton Rouge Police. LSU acknowledged that the initial text-alert system had not reached all subscribers and pledged to investigate the technical failure. Campus counseling was made available for the international student community, particularly the Indian graduate student population that knew the victims.]