As many as 33 people, including an Indian American professor of engineering and another Indian studuent, were killed and at least 15 injured when a gunman went on a shooting spree in a top US university campus Monday morning before turning the gun on himself.
Loganathan, 51, was born in the southern Indian city of Chennai and had been a civil and environmental engineering professor at Virginia Tech since 1982.
Loganathan won several awards for excellence in teaching, had served on the faculty senate and was an adviser to about 75 undergraduate students.
“We all feel like we have had an electric shock. We do not know what to do,” his brother G.V. Palanivel told the NDTV news channel from the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. “He has been a driving force for all of us, the guiding force.”
He is survived by his wife, Usha, and two daughters, Uma  an engineering student at The University of Virginia  and another daughter who is a student at Blacksburg Middle School.
Minal, 26, a Masters student in Building Sciences, was in the Norris Hall of the university when the shooting took place.
“The Indian Embassy has learnt with great sorrow that apart from Indian American Professor G V Loganathan, a first year student Minal Panchal is also among the victims,” a senior official of the Embassy told PTI.
Minal’s friends had said they had been trying to contact her, but her phone was not reachable.
Twenty-six-year-old Minal, who belonged to Mumbai, completed her undergraduate degree from Rizvi College of Architecture Mumbai in 1998. Her profile on the social networking website, Orkut, said she has a slim built, is 168 centimeters tall, has brown eyes and black hair. Messages from many friends and well-wishers had been pouring in for her on the website.
Minal’s Orkut Profile: http://www.orkut.com/Profile.aspx?uid=7532880825063317819
