RESEARCH chemist Elinor Spencer was on campus during the bloody rampage at Virginia Tech University when 32 people were gunned down.

The 26-year-old former student of the Ursuline College at Westgate was in the science and engineering department when Choe Seung-Hui carried out America's worst firearms massacre.

Dr Spencer's mother, Ingrid, is one of Thanet council's senior Conservative councillors and cabinet member for community services.

She told her family how she heard the firing, and how she and fellow students locked and secured the department they were in and followed the terrifying events via the university information website.

She has vowed to stay on and complete her research work at the 26,000-student campus in Blacksburg which she began in January and is due to complete in May.

Speaking at the family home in Westbrook, Cllr Spencer said: "Elinor told me it was very frightening but she is not traumatised.

"She is very strong willed and has a strong moral backbone, but she confided that it is something that will live with her forever."

Elinor was shocked at the easy availability of guns when she first got to America.

Cllr Spencer said: "One of the first things she said to me was that firearms were on sale in a supermarket next to baby clothes.

"It seemed so strange to her how accessible guns are and what an everyday object they are to Americans. It was something that really caught her attention."