Category: School Violence

  • Cho may have been bullied. Boo-hoo.

    Cho may have been bullied. Boo-hoo.

    Va. Tech Shooter Was Laughed At:

    It was inevitable, wasn’t it?

    Now the claims are being made that history’s most prolific coward was bullied.

    Long before he snapped, Virginia Tech gunman Cho Seung-Hui was picked on, pushed around and laughed at over his shyness and the strange way he talked when he was a schoolboy in the Washington suburbs, former classmates say.

    Chris Davids, a Virginia Tech senior who graduated from Westfield High School in Chantilly, Va., with Cho in 2003, recalled that the South Korean immigrant almost never opened his mouth and would ignore attempts to strike up a conversation.

    Once, in English class, the teacher had the students read aloud, and when it was Cho’s turn, he just looked down in silence, Davids recalled. Finally, after the teacher threatened him with an F for participation, Cho started to read in a strange, deep voice that sounded “like he had something in his mouth,” Davids said.

    “As soon as he started reading, the whole class started laughing and pointing and saying, `Go back to China,’” Davids said.

    Stephanie Roberts, 22, a fellow member of Cho’s graduating class at Westfield High, said she never witnessed anyone picking on Cho in high school.

    “I just remember he was a shy kid who didn’t really want to talk to anybody,” she said. “I guess a lot of people felt like maybe there was a language barrier.”

    But she said friends of hers who went to middle school with Cho told her they recalled him getting picked on there.

    “There were just some people who were really mean to him and they would push him down and laugh at him,” Roberts said Wednesday. “He didn’t speak English really well and they would really make fun of him.”

    Three words for you. “Suck it up.” It ended 4 years ago. What a selfish, egomaniacal, self-centered, piece of crap. He’s also another mutant freak that bought into the Columbine bullying myth. He didn’t have the stones to stand up to his attackers, so he killed 31 innocent victims four freakin’ years later. When did we start raising a generation of emotional cripples who think the entire fucking universe revolves around them?

    This cowardly scumbag, who by the way is rotting in hell, will no doubt receive unwarranted canonization from the vultures who will pick at his corpse to satisfy their inane agenda, whether it’s the anti-anti-depressant Luddites or the soccer moms whose kids are too weak to stand up for themselves.

    Listen up good all you snot nose little punks who think they can identify with this coward. I lived through bullying. I had enough concussions and broken bones to show for it. You can get through school without having to resort to violence. Once high school is over, you never have to deal with that crap again. Or you can be a selfish little bitch. Your decision.

    Thanks to Pat for the link.

  • The root of all evil

    The root of all evil

    Cho sent a manifesto of hate:

    This is an article from the News and Observer in Raleigh about the tragedy at Virginia Tech. The thing I like about this article is that it draws the comparison between Cho and North Carolina’s own Alvaro Rafael Castillo, and how Cho was not the first school shooter to mail a manifesto.

    However, what I really want to discuss is Cho’s obvious hatred for “the rich”. I get the feeling “the rich” are going to become the new “jocks”. Anyway, this is from Cho’s self-serving manifesto…

    “Your Mercedes wasn’t enough, you brats,” he said. “Your golden necklaces weren’t enough you snobs. Your trust funds wasn’t enough. Your vodka and cognac wasn’t enough. All your debaucheries weren’t enough. Those weren’t enough to fulfill your hedonistic needs. You had everything.”

    Hold it right there, Junior. You attended Virginia Tech. You legally owned two handguns. You recorded yourself on a video camera. The files were transferred to QuickTime, which leads me to believe you owned some form of Mac.

    None of those things are cheap. I hate to break it to you, Slapnuts, since I know you’re busy rotting in hell right now, but you were richer than a lot of people.

    Personally, I think you were just a jealous bitch who wasn’t rich enough.

  • Cho wasn’t troubled. He was just mean

    Cho wasn’t troubled. He was just mean

    Professor recalls ‘mean streak’:

    Please read the words of Virginia Tech professor Nikki Giovanni. Ms. Giovanni taught one of Cho’s writing classes. She’s not buying into the whole “troubled kid” crap.

    “I knew when it happened that that’s probably who it was,” Giovanni said, referring to her former pupil. “I would have been shocked if it wasn’t.”

    Cho’s poetry was so intimidating — and his behavior so menacing — that Giovanni had him removed from her class in the fall of 2005, she said. Giovanni said the final straw came when two of her students quit attending her poetry sessions because of Cho.

    “I was trying to find out, what am I doing wrong here?” Giovanni recalled thinking, but the students later explained, “He’s taking photographs of us. We don’t know what he’s doing.”

    Giovanni went to the department’s then-chairwoman, Lucinda Roy, and told her, “I was willing to resign before I was going to continue with him.” Roy took Cho out of Giovanni’s class.

    “I know we’re talking about a troubled youngster and crap like that, but troubled youngsters get drunk and jump off buildings; troubled youngsters drink and drive,” Giovanni said. “I’ve taught troubled youngsters. I’ve taught crazy people. It was the meanness that bothered me. It was a really mean streak.”

    No one should take pity on Cho Seung-Hui. He is not a victim. He was not “troubled”. He was nothing more than an insane, selfish, coward.

  • It’s official: Cho is a mutant

    It’s official: Cho is a mutant

    I just finished watching the NBC Nightly News. It’s the first time I’ve watched a TV newscast in a very long time.

    Brian Williams was discussing the “manifesto” that Cho Seung-Hui sent to NBC. In it, Cho refers to the Columbine killers, Eric Harris, and Dylan Klebold, by name, calling them martyrs.

    So he’s nothing more than a mutant copying the actions of two cowardly scumbags.

    The flames of hell burn a little more yellow tonight with the addition of another coward.

  • Cho’s family

    Cho’s family

    Cho’s Family Struggled in Korea:

    This is an AP article about Cho Seung-Hui’s family life.

    His parents immigrated to America when he was 8 for, lacking a better term, the American Dream.

    They moved to the U.S. in order to have a better life. They worked in a dry cleaner’s while raising him in suburban D.C.

    I hope to God they didn’t pay for his stay at Virginia Tech because he did a shitty job of paying them back.

  • Question Mark Kid

    Question Mark Kid

    Shooter was the ‘question mark kid’:

    More former classmates of Cho Seung-Hui are describing him as a loner, but it sounds like it was by his own choice…

    Classmates say that on the first day of a British literature class last year, students took turns introducing themsleves. When it was Cho Seung-Hui’s turn to speak, he said nothing.

    The professor then looked at the sign-in sheet, and noticed that Cho had written a question mark instead of his name. The professor asked, “Is your name ‘Question mark?”‘ A classmate, Julie Poole, says Cho offered little response.

    She says he then spent much of the class sitting in the back of the room, wearing a hat and seldom participating. Even though it was a small English department, she says, Cho remained anonymous, not reaching out to anyone, and not talking.

    Unfortunately, for the victims at Virginia Tech, that question mark is now an exclamation point.

  • Jack Thompson, Dr. Phil, and Rush Limbaugh

    Jack Thompson, Dr. Phil, and Rush Limbaugh

    What do those three names have in common besides the fact that they’re overpaid talking heads? Well, two of them have placed the blame for the Virginia Tech massacre squarely on video games while one of them dismissed the idea, and it may not be the ones that you think.

    Ok, Jack Thompson is the one that you think. That should have come as no surprise.

    What did come as a surprise was TV quack, Dr. Phil. I was never a big fan of his to begin with, but I thought he had more smarts than this…

    Well, Larry, every situation is different. The question really is can we spot them. And the problem is we are programming these people as a society. You cannot tell me – common sense tells you that if these kids are playing video games, where they’re on a mass killing spree in a video game, it’s glamorized on the big screen, it’s become part of the fiber of our society. You take that and mix it with a psychopath, a sociopath or someone suffering from mental illness and add in a dose of rage, the suggestibility is too high.

    What came as even more of a surprise was radio blowhard Rush Limbaugh coming to the defense of gamers.

    Not every video gamer goes out and murders 33 people on the college campus though. There’s more to this than that, it may desensitize people, but it doesn’t turn everybody into mass murderers?

    People have a tough time accepting a relatively simple explanation for something of this scale. But how many people are playing video games out there? How many millions of people play video games, and how many millions of people have guns?

    As they say, politics makes strange bedfellows.

  • Another appeal for Osantowski

    Another appeal for Osantowski

    Osantowski to seek Supreme Court appeal:

    The last time we heard from convicted school shooting plotter Andrew Osantowski, his conviction was upheld, and he found out that he might receive more prison time according to the Michigan Court of Appeals. Now his attorney is appealing to the Michigan Supreme Court.

    The appellate attorney for Andrew Osantowski said that she will ask the state Supreme Court to hear arguments on a half-dozen issues, including the constitutionality of the terrorism statute and his sentencing guideline range.

    Marla McCowan, Osantowski’s appellate attorney, said she also asked the Court of Appeals to reconsider its March 2006 decision to allow Osantowski’s statement to be used in the case. McCowan said she is arguing that Osantowski’s Miranda rights were not properly provided. She said a decision on that issue could be made by May.

    Osantowski is scheduled for resentencing June 13th, but this appeal could delay that.

  • Hainstock’s grandmother testifies

    Hainstock’s grandmother testifies

    Grandmother: Accused shooter considerate child:

    Here is some courtroom theatrics for you.

    In a hearing to see if Weston High School shooter, Eric Hainstock, will be tried as an adult, his grandmother testified on his behalf.

    Irene Hainstock was pushed up to the stand in a wheelchair and, with a gray bun and a white crocheted blanket on her lap, gave teary testimony about her relationship with her grandson and his troubled upbringing. Hainstock sat unmoved throughout her testimony.

    “He’s always been a loving child” he showed affection very easily and he was very talkative,” she said. “He liked to talk, and grandma listened.”

    His very early childhood, spent in Reedsburg with parents Shawn and Lisa Hainstock, was relatively normal, Irene Hainstock said. It was when he was three or four and his father remarried to Pricella Hainstock that things became “not the best,” she said.

    The Hainstock home on Bird Drive in La Valle was unkempt with multiple dogs that Pricella was raising in the home, she said.

    Once Shawn Hainstock said to his wife, “I think you love the dogs more than you love Eric,” Irene Hainstock testified. “She said, ‘Maybe I do.” Hearing that felt “terrible,” she said. “He’s my grandson.”

    In his older childhood years he began to be “terribly nervous and jumpy and flustered,” Irene Hainstock said, and was prescribed Ritalin. In the fall of 2001, when Eric was 10, he went to live with his grandmother for several months.

    Even after he returned home, he would bike the three miles to his grandmother’s home and seemed to seek refuge in their relationship, she said.

    “Like any teenager, I think he resented Pricella’s authority over him,” she said. “He always came to grandma.”

    When he would complain about being bullied at school, the advice she would give him, Irene Hainstock said, was “trying to get along, forgive.”

    What does Hainstock’s home life have to do with killing John Klang? After all, he didn’t murder his stepmother.

    The prosecution seems to be unfazed.

    After Hainstock had testified that her grandson was locked in a locker at school, held by his ankles with his head in a toilet by another student and told by a teacher that he wouldn’t “be (at school) long if I have anything to say about it,” District Attorney Patricia Barrett asked what she had done to intervene.

    Irene Hainstock said she thought that was Eric’s parents’ job.

    “So it didn’t worry you enough to go past his parents to protect your grandson and tell the school?” Barrett asked. “It seemed to have stuck in your memory, but it didn’t seem to bother you enough to report it.”

    “Like I said,” Hainstock said, “I thought his parents would take care of it.”

    Barrett said a school report showed Eric had instigated the incident with the toilet, and earlier had threatened other students, brought to school both powdered calcium he said was cocaine and a mixture of Kool-Aid and cough syrup he said was blood.

    In the spring of eighth grade, Barrett said, Eric threw a chair in choir class and grabbed his teacher by her arm until it was numb while screaming profanities. Irene Hainstock said she wasn’t aware of any of those incidents.

    But he’s the victim? I don’t think so.