The most severe tradedy event occured in the United States yesterday. Cho Seung-Hui, a senior student at VT, killed 32 students with his gun bought 36 days ago. Under the subsequent investigation, it submits that he has well prepared to indifferently kill others. Maybe, the policy of gun control in the United States is much more sensible!
Regarding to this morning event, hope that the spirits of all death victims will be rest in peace! (Here are some reports I like to record.)
The man who murdered at least 30 people in the nation's worst shooting massacre was a 23-year-old English major named Cho Seung-Hui, the police chief at Virginia Tech said this morning. The chief, Wendell Flinchum, held out the possibility that a second shooter might have been involved, and he said authorities could not definitively say that Cho killed two people in a dorm earlier Monday morning in addition to the 30 slaughtered in Norris Hall. But Cho's fingerprints were apparently found on a gun used in both buildings. Cho fatally shot himself in the face before police could engage him, but officials were able to identify him from the fingerprints in his immigration documents, according to ABC News.
A citizen of South Korea, Cho moved to the U.S. when he was 8, according to the Chicago Tribune. A legal resident of the U.S., he mostly grew up outside Washington in Centreville, Va., where his family has a dry-cleaning business. Cho graduated from Westfield High in nearby Chantilly in 2003.
Cho had recently developed an interest in firearms. According to a Roanoke, Va., news site, a police affidavit says Cho possessed Walther P22 and Glock 9 mm handguns — both expensive, accurate guns favored by gun enthusiasts and cops. One federal source told TIME it appears that as many as "a couple of hundred" rounds were fired during the rampage. Cho's extraordinary killing effectiveness suggests someone who was trained, or who trained himself, in "execution-style" killing, according to the federal source. Related Articles
Cho bought his first gun, the 9 mm, on March 13, a source told ABC. The Walther was purchased just last week. Virginia law prohibits buying more than one handgun in a 30-day period. It appears Cho waited the full month before buying the Walther, suggesting he didn't just snap. According to the Virginia State Police, as an alien with a green card, Cho would have been able to buy guns legally as long as he provided proof of his residence.
An affidavit state police filed to search Cho's dorm room (2121 Harper Hall) suggests Cho had been planning mayhem for some time. It says that a note containing a bomb threat was found near his body; the note is similar to two other anonymous bomb threats issued against engineering buildings at the school last week. Cho may have probed the campus emergency response with the previous notes.
The affidavit said he is believed to have possessed "multiple guns including but not limited to" the Walther and the Glock.
Investigators are still looking for Cho's motives, but Cho left a discursive note in his dorm room that offered some explanations, authorities told ABC. The only quote released so far is this cryptic line: "You caused me to do this."
Professor Carolyn Rude, chairwoman of the university's English department, told the Associated Press that "there was some concern about him." She said his creative writing was disturbing enough that Cho had been referred to the university counseling service, but she said she didn't know what the outcome was.
The scene at Virginia Tech after the slayings was somber and unexpectedly tranquil for the site of a recent mass murder. Gusts tore through the campus' streets Monday night, which were largely free of cars thanks to police blockades. Doors to university buildings were locked; handmade signs affixed to them were euphemistic: "Closed due to the incident."
Students at the London Underground, a nearby bar, walked heavily, many cradling Pabst Blue Ribbons and shots of liquor. Some wrapped arms around one another.
There was also a vigil Monday night near Norris. Freshman Ryan Godlewski, 18, visited the vigil twice. He was surprised more students didn't show up. "It was disappointing to see so few people here," he said of the dozen students gathered during his second trip. "I wanted to bang on people's doors and get them to come here. I wanted to be with people tonight." Godlewski said his parents want him to return immediately to New Hampshire even though the semester has three weeks left. He's thinking about transferring for his sophomore year. "After today, though, I feel like if something this horrible can happen in a place like [rural Viriginia], it can happen anywhere," he said.
Other students said the school was being treated unfairly by some in the media: "It's just tough to hear all this talk about our school," said freshman Stephen Ellis. "It's probably one of the safest places you could go. Blacksburg is a calm town. This is out of character for this area. One idiot had to go and ruin this all."
Sophomore Dustin Lynch echoed that sentiment: "The press and media have really been taking it hard to the security and police officers. Virginia Tech is a safe campus... You can't possibly prepare for a situation of this scale or something like this. You can't prepare for one crazy person, especially at a campus of this size."
President Bush and the First Lady attended a convocation on the Virginia Tech campus Tuesday afternoon.
with reporting by Elaine Shannon, Tracy Samantha Schmidt and Caitlin Sullivan/Blacksburg, Va.
BLACKSBURG, Virginia (CNN) -- Long before before Cho Seung-Hui's deadly shooting spree on the Virginia Tech campus, a professor was so concerned about his anger that she took him out of another instructor's class and taught him one-on-one.
The former chairwoman of Virginia Tech's English department, Lucinda Roy, said the anger Cho expressed in the fall 2005 creative writing course was palpable if not explicit.
The writings by Cho, an English major, were disturbing enough that she went to police and other university officials to seek help. (Watch the professor tell how her student frightened her )
"The threats seemed to be underneath the surface," she said. "They were not explicit, and that was the difficulty the police had."
"My argument was that he seemed so disturbed that we needed to do something about this."
His instructor and fellow students also found his behavior in class "inappropriate," Roy said.
"He was taking photographs of students without their permission, especially under the desk," she said.
But without a clear threat nothing could be done, and Roy made the decision to instruct him away from other students.
"I just felt I was between a rock and a hard place," she said. "It seemed the only alternative was to send him back to the classroom, and I wouldn't do it."
While teaching Cho one-on-one, Roy said she "made it clear that that kind of writing was unacceptable and he needed to write in another voice."
She also said that she encouraged Cho to go to counseling, and believed that he may have "gotten tired of hearing it" and begun to tell her he had been going when, perhaps, he had not.
Cho was an intelligent student, Roy said, but he left students and professors alike unnerved in his presence.
Police say Cho killed at least 30 people and wounded 17 others before killing himself in Norris Hall, an engineering classroom building, Monday.
According to a search warrant, police found a note in Norris Hall containing a bomb threat directed at engineering buildings on the campus.
During a three-week period before the shootings, the university received two other bomb threat notes, and police are investigating to see if those threats were related to the shooting. (Watch how the note threatens engineering buildings)
It's also believed the 23-year-old student killed two other people earlier that day in a dormitory on campus.
Virginia Tech Police Chief Wendell Flinchum said ballistics tests show that one of the two guns recovered at Norris Hall was used at the dorm.
'Twisted, macabre violence'
Ian MacFarlane, who said he had class with Cho, called two plays Cho wrote "very graphic" and "extremely disturbing."
MacFarlane provided a copy of the writings to AOL, where he is an employee. (Read MacFarlane's blog and the two plays)
"It was like something out of a nightmare," MacFarlane wrote in a blog. "The plays had really twisted, macabre violence that used weapons I wouldn't have even thought of.
"Before Cho got to class that day, we students were talking to each other with serious worry about whether he could be a school shooter."
Cho paid $571 for a 9 mm Glock 19 pistol just over a month ago, the owner of Roanoke Firearms told CNN Tuesday. He also used a .22-caliber Walther pistol in the attack, police said. (Interactive: The weapons used in the shootings)
John Markell said Cho was very low-key when he purchased the Glock and 50 rounds of ammunition with a credit card in an "unremarkable" purchase.
Cho presented three forms of identification and did not say why he wanted the gun, Markell said. (Watch how quickly these guns can be fired, reloaded )
State police conducted an instant background check that probably took about a minute, the store owner said.
Markell said he was shocked when three agents from the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms arrived at his store Monday with the receipt for the weapon.
Shooter's note
Cho did not leave a suicide note, according to Col. Steve Flaherty, superintendent of the Virginia State Police. (Watch Flaherty describe the scene after the shootings )
However, ABC News reported that other law enforcement sources said Cho did leave some kind of note in his dorm room. It contained an explanation of his actions and states, "You caused me to do this," ABC News reported.
It also railed against "rich kids," "debauchery" and "deceitful charlatans" on campus, according to the Chicago Tribune. (Note indicates Cho was angry at "rich kids")
Authorities are still investigating whether Cho had any accomplices in planning or executing Monday's rampage, Flaherty said.
Cho, a resident alien from South Korea, lived at the university's Harper Hall, Flinchum said.
"He was a loner, and we're having difficulty finding information about him," said Larry Hincker, associate vice president for university relations.
Governor not ready to talk gun control
Tuesday, after an emotional convocation service on campus attended by President Bush, Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine announced that at the university's request, he was appointing an independent panel to review Monday's tragedy.
"It is a very important thing, and a standard thing, that a thorough after-action review be done, both on the event and the response, so that we can learn all we can about them."
However, Kaine said he wasn't interested in arguments about gun control.
"People who want to take this within 24 hours of the event and make it their political hobby horse to ride, I've got nothing but loathing for them," Kaine said at a Tuesday evening news conference. (Watch how crime rates affect public support for gun laws )
"To those who want to try to make this into some little crusade, I say: Take that elsewhere. Let this community deal with grieving individuals and be sensitive to those needs."
As questions continued to arise about how police reacted to the first shooting at the dorm, university President Charles Steger on Tuesday defended the response, saying police believed it to be "a domestic fight, perhaps a murder-suicide" that was contained to one dorm room.
Police cordoned off the 895-student West Ambler Johnston dorm and all residents were told about the shooting as police looked for witnesses, Steger said.
Authorities were still investigating what they believed was an "isolated incident" when the slaughter started at Norris Hall.
"I don't think anyone could have predicted that another event was going to take place two hours later," Steger said, adding that it would've been difficult to warn every student because most were off campus at the time.
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