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33 People Dead, 15 Wounded. Deadliest Shooting rampage in US history, Blacksburg VA

BigMike

BigMike

BrokenbikeMike
Jul 29, 2003
8,931
0
Montgomery county MD
For those of you on the other side of the country who may not have heard yet, yesterday there was a terrible and tragic event at The University of Virginia Tech

BLACKSBURG--Officials today expect to begin releasing the names of the 33 people killed and 15 wounded yesterday in two events two hours apart at Virginia Tech. It was the deadliest shooting rampage in U.S. history.

The events brought back memories of a deadly shooting near campus in August of a sheriff's deputy and a security guard.

Most of the students and faculty members killed yesterday were in Norris Hall, a building used mainly for engineering classes and laboratories. The killer had chained shut an undetermined number of doors, forcing some students to leap from second-story windows to escape.
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I know bonedoc started a thread about this here but I wanted to start another with a title that fit the heinous nature of what happened.


My condolences to all in that part of the state, and, if nothing else, I hope we can learn from this event
 
N8 v2.0

N8 v2.0

Not the sharpest tool in the shed
Oct 18, 2002
11,003
149
The Cleft of Venus
Roommates Describe Gunman as Loner
By MARC SANTORA

BLACKSBURG, Va., April 17 — He was a stranger in a crowd of 26,000. Cho Seung-Hui was even unknown to the young man who for nearly a year slept just feet away from him.

“He was my roommate,” said Joe Aust, a 19-year-old sophomore. “I didn’t know him that well, though.”

Mr. Aust, who was an engineering major, and another student who shared their suite, Karan Grewal, 21, painted a picture of a loner who ate his meals alone in the dining hall and shunned any attempts at friendship.

They never saw him with a girl or any friends for that matter.

But they thought he was just strange. Never in a million years could they imagine him to be the kind of person who would kill 32 other people in a three-hour spasm of violence.

Mr. Cho was identified this morning by officials at Virginia Tech as the man who the day before gunned down professors and fellow classmates in what now stands as the worst rampage shooting in American history.

While his acquaintances were stunned by the news, they did acknowledge, in hindsight, seeing warning signs.

Although Mr. Cho told his roommate he was a business major, the university said today that he was an English major.

Carolyn Rude, the chair of the English Department, said that she had spoken to a professor who taught Mr. Cho and was told that the general impression of him was that he was “troubled.”

“There were signs that he was troubled,” she said. “And the English Department at one point did intervene.”

She said that it related to something he wrote in a creative writing class but did not give details about what was written or what kind of intervention was taken, only that it was some time ago, before she was made chair of the department.

“Sometimes some creative writing class students will say something that unnerves us,” she said. “I know that there was some intervention and I don’t know the particulars.”

She said she had not seen what he wrote and said that she could not make public such personal information about a student.

Without going into the specifics of this case, she said that often when there is an intervention the incident is reported to either the counseling center or the dean of students.

“We are not psychologists,” she said.

If some of Mr. Cho’s teachers were concerned, the students who shared a suite with him were puzzled by him.

Mr. Grewal recalled how earlier in the year someone running for a student council position visited the suite to pass out candy and ask for votes. Mr. Cho would not even make eye contact with him, turning his head away and refusing to make conversation.

The suite is made up of three rooms, each with two students, and a common area with a couch and two chairs. There were no decorations on the walls and the bathroom, in typical college fashion, was littered with discarded soap dispensers and tidbits of toilet paper. Above the stall was a sign reminding everyone to flush when they were done.

In the corner of the main common area, there were dozens of empty water bottles and Dr. Pepper cans piled. On top of the bottles were at least six beige and blue plastic gloves used by the police as they searched the Mr. Cho’s room last night.

Mr. Grewal said officers were in Mr. Cho’s room, on the second floor of Harper Hall, from 7 p.m. until midnight and they interviewed each of the suitemates.

The police, he said, were surprised that even his roommate knew so little about him.

Mr. Aust was not comfort able showing a reporter into his room, but said the police had taken most of his stuff away anyway. “I know they took his computer,” Mr. Aust said

Mr. Aust spoke just outside his room, on the wall outside the door was Mr. Aust’s name was with that of his roommate, spelled “Sueng-ho,” on an orange cutout of a fish provided to all the students by the resident advisor when they moved in last August.

“He was always really, really quiet and kind of weird, keeping to himself all the time,” he said. “Just of anti-social, didn’t talk to anybody. I tried to make conversation with him in August or so and he would just give one word answers and not try and carry on the conversation.”

He said it was a creepy quietness.

“I would notice a lot of times, I would come in the room and he would kind of be sitting at his desk, just staring at nothing,” he said.

Mr. Aust and Mr. Grewal, 21, said he was often on his computer.

“When he was in the room, he would spend a lot of time on his computer, downloading music and stuff,” Mr. Aust. said. There was no single style of music that he particularly liked in particular, from rock to country to pop.

Mr. Cho was often out of the room.

“He was probably gone more often than he was here,” he said. “I just figured he had classes.”
 
N8 v2.0

N8 v2.0

Not the sharpest tool in the shed
Oct 18, 2002
11,003
149
The Cleft of Venus
Campus Killer 'Copied Movie'
Updated: 11:31, Thursday April 19, 2007

Police believe the Virginia gunman may have been copying scenes from a film when he carried out his killing spree.



Detectives say Cho Seung-Hui repeatedly watched the South Korean movie Oldboy in the days leading up to the massacre in which 32 people were killed.

The film's themes of obsession and revenge also occur in Cho's own writings.

In a chilling video sent by the student to the American TV network NBC he appears to re-enact scenes from the movie in a series of photographs.

In one he holds a gun to his own head and in another wields a hammer, images that appear in the film.

The video also confirms that Cho had been planning the killings for some time.

It is believed to have been posted after the first shooting in a university dormitory, in which two students were killed, but before Cho shot dead another 30 people in a classroom across campus and then committed suicide.

Police said the package that contained photographs, video and writings could be a "very new critical component" of the investigation into the mass killings.

The video contains a rambling and at times incoherent account of his grievances and his reasons for the shootings.

The package Cho sent to NBCVirginia Police superintendent Col Steve Flaherty said: "We're in the process of attempting to analyse and evaluate its worth."

The package, addressed to NBC News head Steve Capus, bears a postal stamp in the two-hour window between the first shooting and the second, in which Cho killed himself.

It was passed to the FBI after it arrived yesterday.

In the video Cho talks to the camera and at one point makes a reference to the massacre, saying "this didn't have to happen".

In one clip, Cho says: "You had a hundred billion chances and ways to have avoided today.

"But you decided to spill my blood. You forced me into a corner and gave me only one option. The decision was yours. Now you have blood on your hands that will never wash off."

One of the 29 pictures in the package showed Cho staring at the camera with his arms outstretched, brandishing two handguns and wearing what appeared to be a military-style jacket for holding ammunition.

The latest revelations come after it emerged Cho was held in a mental health unit after two women students complained about his behaviour in 2005.

University police chief Wendell Flinchum said officers spoke to Cho in November and December 2005 following complaints of low-level harassment.


http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-1261402,00.html
 
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