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Police identify Virginia Tech shooter

JOSH MELTZER (THE ROANOKE TIMES)/Associated Press

Associated Press

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Also by Associated Press correspondent:

Budget deal reached (October 20, 2007)
Institute shuts down UW lab (September 20, 2007)

by Associated Press correspondent

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

BLACKSBURG, Va. (AP) — The gunman in the Virginia Tech massacre was a sullen loner who alarmed professors and classmates with his twisted, violence-drenched creative writing and left a rambling note raging against women and rich kids.

A chilling picture emerged Tuesday of Cho Seung-Hui — a 23-year-old senior majoring in English — a day after the bloodbath that left 33 people dead, including Cho, who killed himself as police closed in.

News reports said that he may have been taking medication for depression and that he was becoming increasingly violent and erratic.

Despite the many warning signs that came to light in the bloody aftermath, police and university officials offered no clues as to exactly what set Cho off on the deadliest shooting rampage in modern U.S. history.

"He was a loner, and we're having difficulty finding information about him," school spokesman Larry Hincker said.

A student who attended Virginia Tech last fall provided obscenity- and violence-laced screenplays that he said Cho wrote as part of a playwriting class they both took. One was about a fight between a stepson and his stepfather, and involved throwing of hammers and attacks with a chainsaw. Another was about students fantasizing about stalking and killing a teacher who sexually molested them.

"When we read Cho's plays, it was like something out of a nightmare. The plays had really twisted, macabre violence that used weapons I wouldn't have even thought of," former classmate Ian MacFarlane, now an AOL employee, wrote in a blog posted on an AOL web site. He said he and other students "were talking to each other with serious worry about whether he could be a school shooter."

"We always joked we were just waiting for him to do something, waiting to hear about something he did," said another classmate, Stephanie Derry. "But when I got the call it was Cho who had done this, I started crying, bawling."

Professor Carolyn Rude, chair of the university's English department, said Cho's writing was so disturbing that he had been referred to the university's counseling service.

"Sometimes, in creative writing, people reveal things, and you never know if it's creative or if they're describing things, if they're imagining things or just how real it might be," Rude said. "But we're all alert to not ignore things like this."

She said she did not know when he was referred for counseling, or what the outcome was. Rude refused to release any of his writings or his grades, citing privacy laws. The counseling service refused to comment.

Cho — who arrived in the United States as boy from South Korea in 1992 and was raised in suburban Washington, D.C., where his parents worked at a dry cleaners — left a note that was found after the bloodbath.

A law enforcement official who read Cho's note described it Tuesday as a typed, eight-page rant against rich kids and religion. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

"You caused me to do this," the official quoted the note as saying.

Cho indicated in his letter that the end was near and that there was a deed to be done, the official said. He also expressed disappointment in his own religion, and made several references to Christianity, the official said.

The official said the letter was either found in Cho's dorm room or in his backpack. The backpack was found in the hallway of the classroom building where the shootings happened, and contained several rounds of ammunition, the official said.

Col. Steve Flaherty, superintendent of the Virginia State Police, said authorities were going through a considerable number of writings.

Citing unidentified sources, the Chicago Tribune reported Cho had recently set a fire in a dorm room and had stalked some women.

Monday's rampage consisted of two attacks that were more than two hours apart — first at a dormitory, where two people were killed, and then inside a classroom building, where 31 people died, including Cho. Two handguns — a 9 mm and a .22-caliber — were found in the classroom building.

The Washington Post quoted law enforcement sources as saying Cho died with the words "Ismail Ax" in red ink on one of his arms, but they were not sure what that meant.

According to court papers, police found a "bomb threat" note — directed at engineering school buildings — near the victims in the classroom building. In the past three weeks, Virginia Tech was hit with two other bomb threats. Investigators have not connected those earlier threats to Cho.

Cho graduated from Westfield High School in Chantilly, Va., in 2003. His family lived in an off-white, two-story townhouse in Centreville, Va.

At least one of those killed in the rampage, Reema Samaha, graduated from Westfield High in 2006. But there was no immediate word from authorities on whether Cho knew the young woman and singled her out.

One law enforcement official said Cho's backpack contained a receipt for a March purchase of a Glock 9 mm pistol. Cho held a green card, meaning he was a legal, permanent resident. That meant he was eligible to buy a handgun unless he had been convicted of a felony.

Roanoke Firearms owner John Markell said his shop sold the Glock and a box of practice ammo to Cho 36 days ago for $571.

"He was a nice, clean-cut college kid. We won't sell a gun if we have any idea at all that a purchase is suspicious," Markell said.

Investigators stopped short of saying Cho carried out both attacks. But state police ballistics tests showed one gun was used in both.

And two law enforcement officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the information had not been announced, said Cho's fingerprints were on both guns, whose serial numbers had been filed off.

Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine said he will appoint a panel at the university's request to review authorities' handling of the disaster. Parents and students bitterly complained that the university should have locked down the campus immediately after the first burst of gunfire and did not do enough to warn people.

— Associated Press writers Stephen Manning in Centreville, Va.; Matt Barakat in Richmond, Va.; Lara Jakes Jordan and Beverley Lumpkin in Washington; and Vicki Smith, Sue Lindsey, Adam Geller and Justin Pope in Blacksburg contributed to this report.

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Anonymous (April 18, 2007 @ 10:29am):

is the herald going to remain quiet on the gun control debate or is this just the calm before the storm?

Anonymous (April 18, 2007 @ 12:58pm):

Laws that forbid the carrying of arms . . . disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes . . . Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.
Cesare Beccaria, the founder of criminology

Anonymous (April 18, 2007 @ 1:37pm):

The gun control debate is a smoke screen. Keeping a firearm is obligatory in Switzerland as well Canada and Finland have extremely liberal gun laws and regulations, a very high percentage of citizen gun ownership with only a sliver of the gun crime that plagues the US. Gun crime is symptomatic. Though gun regulations will treat the symptoms they will not be getting at the greater disease. We have the worst crime and violent crime of any nation in the First World, guns or not we got some other stuff to deal with. Maybe it involves using our second amendment for what it was indented by getting rid of the current regime in office.

Anonymous (April 18, 2007 @ 1:49pm):

People don't stop killers. People with guns do.

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2007/04/18/2007-04-18_people_dont_stop_killers_people_with_gun.html

Anonymous (April 18, 2007 @ 2:01pm):

Before every one decides to exploit this tragedy for their own "I told you so" self righteous political loud-mouthing take a look at this NPR link (NPR not NRA). Look at it long and hard and then at the people in your class or on the street or in the café or in the library. Look at your friends and look at your self.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9647439

Anonymous (April 18, 2007 @ 4:00pm):

2:01pm,

Thank you.

Anonymous (April 18, 2007 @ 10:44pm):

If Librescu had been in Israel he could have been armed and may have defended himself and his students.

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