TOKYO: The governor of Virginia on Tuesday cut short a trade mission to Asia to return home after a shooting rampage left 33 people dead at a university in his state.
Governor Timothy Kaine had just landed on Monday in Tokyo for the two-week tour to negotiate business deals in Japan, Hong Kong and India.
"We just arrived on Monday but we had to turn around and go home and be with the people there. It's a very serious matter," he told reporters as he boarded a flight at Narita airport near Tokyo.
From Tokyo, Kaine declared a state of emergency to coordinate the response to the massacre at Virginia Tech University, the worst school shooting in US hhistory, and ordered flags to fly at half-staff.
Kaine had been due to hold several days of closed-door talks with corporate executives in Japan and Hong Kong before joining a 100-strong trade mission on a weeklong tour of India starting April 22.
There, he had been scheduled to meet with business leaders in New Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai in part to encourage Indian hi-tech entrepreneurs to invest in Virginia, which has a major IT industry in the Washington suburbs.
