RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — The state Supreme Court will hear the state's appeal of a jury's awarding of damages to the parents of two Virginia Tech students who were slain in an April 2007 campus massacre.

A panel of three justices also rejected a bid by attorneys for the parents who want to sue Tech's president, Charles Steger (STEE'-gur). A judge excluded him from a trial in which the state was found negligent for failing to alert the Blacksburg campus of the first shootings.

A jury ruled last March that the university botched its response to the shootings. A lone gunman and 32 students and faculty were left dead in the shooting rampage — the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.

(Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)