A jury found Virginia Tech negligent in the 2007 massacre that left 33 students dead, awarding the families of two victims $4 million each in a wrongful death civil lawsuit.

The parents of Julia Pryde and Erin Peterso said their children might be alive today if campus police and school officials had issued a warning earlier.

Virginia Tech student gunman Seung-Hui Cho killed two people in a dormitory on campus, then managed to leave and come back to a classroom building and kill 30 others before turning the gun on himself.

School authorities did not issue an alert after the first killings because they assumed it was an isolated incident.

Officials then waited two-and-a-half hours before sending a campus-wide warning that a "shooting incident" had occurred. They also failed to say the gunman was still on the loose.

The state immediately filed a motion Thursday to reduce the $4 million award to the families. State law puts a $100,000 cap on the award.

The families rejected their share of an $11 million settlement with Virginia Tech in 2008 to file this recent lawsuit. The earlier settlement was split between 24 families.