Penn State officials have verified that Penn State graduate Jeremy Herbstritt, of Bellefonte, was among the students killed yesterday in the Virginia Tech shootings.

Herbstritt graduated in 2006 with degrees in civil engineering and biochemistry/molecular biology. He had been pursuing a civil engineering degree at Virgina Tech.

Herbstritt's father, Michael Herbstritt, works as an engineer in the Office of the Physical Plant (OPP) at Penn State. Penn State spokesman Geoff Rushton said Michael Herbstritt and his wife had been in Boston watching their daughter run in the Boston Marathon at the time of the shootings, and were currently en route to Blacksburg, VA.

Rushton said professors that knew Herbstritt at Penn State were "very upset."

"Everybody's just devastated about this," he said. "They talked about what a wonderful happy student he was … he was always so friendly."