Profiles of victims in Virginia Tech massacre
Mary Read, 19, of Annandale, Va., was born in South Korea into an Air Force family and lived in Texas and California before settling in the northern Virginia suburb of Annandale, said an aunt, Karen Kuppinger of Rochester, N.Y.
Read considered a handful of colleges, including nearby George Mason University, before choosing Tech. It was a popular destination among her Annandale High School classmates, Kuppinger said.
She had yet to declare a major.
"I think she wanted to try to spread her wings," said Kuppinger, whose niece had struggled adjusting to Virginia Tech's large campus. She'd recently begun making friends and looking into a sorority.
Kuppinger said the family started calling Read as news reports surfaced.
“After three or four hours passed and she hadn’t picked up her cell phone or answered her e-mail ... we did get concerned,” Kuppinger said. “We honestly thought she would pop up.”
Julia Singer, who attended Annandale High School with Read, wrote this to MSNBC.com: "I remember telling her 'I just know you're going to be that girl at our ten-year reunion; the one the girls want to be and guys want to be with,'" she said.
"'I expect you to show us all up, Mary Read.'"
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NBC News
Reema Samaha, 18, from Centreville, Va., a freshman who performed with the school's Contemporary Dance Ensemble. Her brother Omar, a Virginia Tech graduate, told NBC's TODAY show that she was shot dead while in French class.
April 17: TODAY host Matt Lauer talks to the siblings of Reema Samaha, a freshman at Virginia Tech who died in the shootings.
Their father, Joe Samaha, told "Dateline NBC" that "she was a beautiful person and that's what I'll remember her as. We've lost a very talented beautiful young lady who was growing here at the university. Her heart was in dance and theater and she belonged to a contemporary dance ensemble here and she loved that very much."
Katerina Rodgaard, in a posting to MSNBC.com, said she had been a dance instructor to Samaha. "I will never forget her constant smile," she wrote. "So much positive energy. She was such a beautiful dancer as well. ... We were all like a family and she will be missed dearly. She loved being in dance class and I was so proud to hear that she continued her dancing in college. So young, so beautiful and so talented. I'm still in shock."
Samaha had recently taken up belly dancing, a nod to her family’s roots in Lebanon, where the Samahas visited each summer.
“She was just beautiful and when you watched her, I thought she was one of the most gorgeous girls in the world, inside and out,” said Lauren Walters, a former classmate of Samaha’s who now attends Clemson University
Samaha and another victim, Erin Peterson, graduated from Westfield High in Chantilly, Va., in 2006, three years after the alleged gunman, Seung-Hui Cho, graduated from the same school. It was not clear if they knew each other.
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Waleed Shaalan, 32, of Zagazig, Egypt, was a doctoral student in civil engineering.
Shaalan was married and the father of a 1-year-old son, according to the Muslim Students Association at Virginia Tech.
“He was the simplest and nicest guy I ever knew. We would be studying for our exams and he would go buy a cake and make tea for us,” Fahad Pasha, Waleed’s roommate, said on the association’s Web site.
The Egyptian Foreign Ministry said in a statement Wednesday that the Egyptian embassy in Washington was taking steps to fly his body home.
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Leslie Sherman, 20, of Springfield, Va., was a sophomore majoring in history and international studies.
“She had a lot of friends, and was a very outgoing person,” recalled friend Ann Marks, who worked with Sherman in the cafeteria.
An avid traveler, she was headed to Russia this summer to study, said her grandmother, Gerry Adams.
Sherman had visited Boston and London with her mother; she visited her grandparents in Kennewick, Wash., last month for spring break, Adams said.
Sherman — who was named after her grandfather, Leslie — loved reading and socializing with her “gaggle” of more than 15 cousins spread out at colleges across the country, Adams said.
She text-messaged one of them the evening before she died.
“She was so happy. Life was going so well for her,” said Adams, who described the family as “just beside themselves” with grief.
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Maxine Turner, 22, from Vienna, Va., was a senior majoring in chemical engineering. 
Turner had finished her required credits and was preparing for her May graduation but took German as an elective, said her father, Paul Turner. She was shot in the German class.
“She was very excited — she was very excited about school in general,” her father said.
An anonymous poster told MSNBC.com that she had been a classmate of Turner's at James Madison High School in Vienna. "She was at the top of our class and did really well in school ... Vienna is a very close, tight-knit community and I know those from our graduating class of 2003 and all other JMHS students past and present are grieving from this tragic loss of life."
Turner was accepted by a handful of high-profile schools, including Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. But she was determined to be a Virginia Tech Hokie, her father said.
“We tried to convince her to go elsewhere. When you get accepted to Johns Hopkins, it’s a very prestigious school,” he said. “But no, she wanted to go to Virginia Tech.”
Turner recently helped found a chapter of Alpha Omega Epsilon, a sorority for women in engineering. She had accepted a chemical engineering job with W.L. Gore & Associates in Elkton, Md.
“It’s a terrible loss,” her father said Wednesday, weeping. “I cannot understand the legislators in this country, not putting in laws that protect people.”
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Nicole White, 20, of Carrollton, Va., was a junior majoring in international studies and German. White graduated from Smithfield High School in 2004, according to The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk.
White worked at a YMCA as a lifeguard and was an honor student in high school, the newspaper reported.
Laurie Guiffre wrote to MSNBC.com that she had grown up with White, remembering her friend as a person of great character with a genuine love for animals.
"I keep trying to come to terms with the fact that she is no longer here and I will never see her again." Guiffre wrote.
Another childhood friend, Michelle Clay, of Toccoa Falls, Ga., recalled that "[Nicole] was one my four best friends, and we all shared everything."
"I never imagined she would be gone in the blink of an eye."
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Information has been compiled from The Associated Press, NBC News, CollegeMedia.com (the Virginia Tech student newspaper), reader submissions to MSNBC.com, and other media outlets.
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