Virginia Tech leaders are refusing to discuss or explain e-mails that show at least one building was locked down April 16, 2007, while top officials withheld information that two students had been killed and the shooter was at large.

The e-mails and a memo show officials were not fully informing the campus about the deaths more than 20 minutes before Seung-Hui Cho burst into Norris Hall and killed 30 more students and teachers.

The e-mails were uncovered by lawyers for families of 28 people who died in the massacre and made public Tuesday.

Virginia Tech's top officials and spokesmen would not return several phone calls since then. The university is referring all questions to Attorney General Bob McDonnell, B.J. Norris, a special assistant to the school's top spokesman, said yesterday.

McDonnell, through a spokesman, said he felt Virginia Tech officials acted properly.

His office this week formally agreed to an $11 million settlement with the 28 families of the victims.

"Virginia Tech officials acted with dispatch and professionalism during the tragic, and historically unprecedented, events of April 16, 2007," McDonnell's spokesman, J. Tucker Martin, said in a written statement yesterday.

Gordon Hickey, spokesman for Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, declined to comment when asked if the governor was satisfied with the way Virginia Tech officials handled themselves April 16. Hickey said the governor could not comment because some claims still are pending.

One e-mail was sent by Bernadette L. Mondy, co-director of the school office responsible for emergency planning, more than 20 minutes before Cho starting his rampage in Norris Hall. It said her office was on lockdown and that "there is an active shooter on campus."

She sent it to her family a minute before the university issued a campuswide alert saying there had been an earlier shooting at a dormitory and saying "the university community is urged to be cautious and are asked to contact Virginia Tech police if you observe anything suspicious."

An earlier draft of that alert that never was sent would have advised students and staff that at least one person died in that shooting, according to a memo obtained by the lawyers for victims' families.

Shortly after the alert, Mondy sent another e-mail to officials at a nearby school system, copying the alert but with a note, "Unofficial word is that 2 people have died and the shooter is still at large. Tactical teams are staging in blacksburg. My building is in lockdown."

That message went out about the same time students inside Norris Hall made their first 911 calls to report shooting. Nine minutes later, police stormed the building, where Cho just had killed 30 people and then himself.

Lawyers for the families acquired the e-mails, which they do not believe were part of the records reviewed by state investigators, through a Freedom of Information Act request.

The families believe the e-mails and other evidence their lawyers obtained -- including one professor's recollection of calling her husband to report her building was on "quasi lockdown" more than a hour before Cho starting his rampage in Norris Hall -- show Virginia Tech officials mishandled events that day.

As part of the settlement, university and state officials are supposed to meet with family members before the end of the year to answer their questions about their actions.

Contact David Ress at (804) 649-6051 or dress@timesdispatch.com.