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Va. Tech cop-slay madman’s escape plot

He planned every detail.

The mad shooter who killed a Virginia Tech cop Thursday stole a car to drive to campus for his murderous plot — and even brought a change of clothes to help his escape, authorities said yesterday.

But bizarrely, there’s no indication that Ross Ashley, a 22-year-old student at nearby Radford University, knew his victim, a father of five and an Army veteran.

In the most thorough account yet of the first shooting at Virginia Tech since one of the nation’s worst mass murders there in 2007, authorities said Officer Deriek Crouse, 39, was sitting in his cruiser writing up a routine traffic ticket at around noon when Ashley walked up alongside the car and opened fire.

The maniac then sprinted to nearby greenhouses, where investigators say he changed out of a pullover and wool cap and left them behind with his backpack.

A deputy sheriff later found Ashley with a self-inflicted gunshot wound, his handgun nearby. The gun was the same one that killed Crouse.