Tag: Virginia Tech

Killer’s Parents Describe Attempts Over the Years to Help Isolated Son:

I feel bad for the parents of Cho Seung-Hui. According to the article, it seems that they did everything they possibly could for their son. But that’s not what I’m here to discuss.

The part of the article I want to discuss is what his sister thinks may have been his motive…

Although the panel said neither it nor the police had uncovered a motive for Cho’s rampage, his sister provided a key piece of the puzzle. Cho began his college career as a business information technology major but, by the time he was a sophomore, decided to switch to English, which was one of his weakest subjects. Nevertheless, he was convinced that he could be a great writer. He had written a novel, which he described to teachers as “sort of like Tom Sawyer except that it’s really silly and pathetic,” the report said.

Later that year, after his sister found a rejection letter from a New York publishing house, she noticed that he became increasingly depressed and detached. His English grades ranged from B’s to D’s, and his rage grew as he felt no one understood him or his talent.

If you’ve been following this like I have you’ve read Cho’s writings. I wouldn’t exactly call what he had “talent”. It just comes down to more selfishness and arrogance from a deranged lunatic. Over 30 people dead because this assclown couldn’t form a coherent sentence If you spotted him the noun and the verb.

if you’re one of those types that think the world doesn’t recognize your “talent” try a new craft because it’s obvious that you suck.

Report: Virginia Tech could have saved lives:

So the long-awaited report from Virginia Governor Timothy M. Kaine’s eight-member panel about the Virginia Tech massacre was finally delivered from on high. What does it tell us? A bunch of nothing that we didn’t already know.

RICHMOND, Va. — Virginia Tech failed to properly care for a mentally troubled student gunman and waited too long to warn faculty and students after he killed his first two victims in a shooting spree that eventually claimed 31 more lives, including his own, a panel’s report concluded.

Let me interrupt just for a second? Why was it VT’s responsibility to “properly care” for Cho? As far as I can recall VT did all they could to help him. It was up to Cho help himself but he obviously didn’t do that.

Had university officials not waited more than two hours to tell the campus about the initial shootings, lives could have been saved when Seung-Hui Cho later began his massacre inside a classroom building, according to the report, released Wednesday night.

I can’t argue with that but I said that when it first happened.

“Warning the students, faculty and staff might have made a difference,” the panel wrote. “So the earlier and clearer the warning, the more chance an individual had of surviving.”

But the report concluded that while swifter warnings might have helped students and faculty, a lockdown of the 131 buildings on campus would not have been feasible.

And while the first message sent by the university could have gone out at least an hour earlier and been more specific, Cho likely still would have found more people to kill, the report found.

“There does not seem to be a plausible scenario of a university response to the double homicide that could have prevented the tragedy of considerable magnitude on April 16,” the report said. “Cho had started on a mission of fulfilling a fantasy of revenge.”

So basically what they’re saying is even if the campus was notified of the original murders Cho would have still killed a lot of people just maybe some different people. And it took them 4 months to come to this conclusion? I’m glad I’m not a Virginia taxpayer.

The whole boring report can be found here.

Cho Advised Not to Attend Big School:

In a conference call to wounded victims and their families of the Virginia Tech massacre the panel investigating the attack said that Cho Seung Hui was advised not to go to a large school like Virginia Tech.

That was a key revelation in a private teleconference to brief injured students and their families on a report by a panel investigating the attacks, said Derek O’Dell, who was of the 23 injured in the April 16 attack that left 33 dead, including Cho.

A separate call was held later with families of the deceased, hours before the public release of the report Thursday.

“It was recommended that he not apply to school as big as Virginia Tech because he had selective mutism and also ongoing psychiatric needs that a big university probably wouldn’t address as well,” O’Dell said.

What I’d like to know is how did this barely functioning troglodyte (Cho) even get into Virginia Tech? After reading his “plays” and hearing about all his alleged mental difficulties it makes one wonder how he wasn’t a complete drooling idiot.

Paper by Cho Exhibits Disturbing Parallels to Shootings, Sources Say:

Details are being released that Virginia Tech gunman Cho Seung-Hui had written a creative writing class paper that portrayed a student plotting a school shooting. However, in Cho’s paper, the gunman does not go through with his massacre.

Cho wrote the paper for the “Intro to Short Fiction” class that he took in spring 2006, taught by Bob Hicok, an associate professor of English. The gunman described in Cho’s paper was in a high school. Cho, according to acquaintances and law enforcement sources, had expressed a fascination with the Columbine High School shootings while he was in middle school.

Mama’s don’t let your babies grow up to be mutants.

This paper, while not made public, is probably just as disjointed and as difficult to read as Cho’s “plays”.

The reason this is making the news rounds now is that not all law enforcement agencies investigating the massacre had this paper in their possession.

Several of the agencies probing the shootings had not been made aware of the paper’s existence, and the investigative panel appointed by Gov. Timothy M. Kaine did not receive a copy until recently. The university was supposed to turn over all of Cho’s writings to the panel, but this paper was left out.

Additionally, Virginia State Police officials, who also have a copy of the paper, said they could not give it to the panel under state law because it is part of the investigative file. Among the panel’s areas of inquiry is the sharing of information among state agencies.

So basically what we have here is a failure to communicate. A law enforcement protocol did not allow the paper to be given to other law enforcement agencies and the investigative panel. The paper itself is probably just more of the nonsensical ramblings of a bitter, selfish, and cowardly loser who couldn’t handle the deal that life gave him.

Virginia Tech probe finds no fault in massacre response:

An internal review by the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, otherwise known as Virginia Tech, has assigned no blame to anyone for the school’s response on the day of the massacre.

“We at Virginia Tech have been forever changed by the crimes of this severely disturbed young man,” Steger said during a news conference Wednesday. VideoWatch Steger announce the results »

“He was determined to commit murder, planned the crime meticulously and managed to conceal his homicidal urges from all of law enforcement authorities, and the mental health experts who tried to help him and presumably from his own family,” Steger said.

The report released Wednesday says there was good cooperation and sound agreements between Virginia Tech and local police. It also says that the campus communications system was “dramatically stressed,” but performed adequately during the crisis. The review recommends replacing the entire system.

The report also goes on to state that the school needs to be more active in identifying “at risk” students like Cho. The thing is you’re never going to be able to find these students 100% of the time. Not only that but I think these kinds of recommendations sound great after a tragedy like this happens but in reality it’s just closing the barn door after the horses have gotten out.

Police doubt Virginia massacre was rehearsed:

While various other sources are claiming that Cho Seung-Hui practiced his assault prior to the Virginia Tech massacre police are saying different.

“It would be speculation to suggest that he was practicing locking the doors,” State Police Superintendent Col. Steve Flaherty said in the first update on the investigation in months.

“Why West Ambler-Johnston? Why Emily Hilscher? We don’t know,” Virginia Tech Police Chief Wendell Flinchum said. Hilscher was one of Cho’s first victims, shot to death in her West Ambler-Johnston dormitory.

Since the dormitory was locked early that morning, “we believe Cho waited for some unsuspecting individual to walk in or out of West Ambler-Johnston and then took the opportunity to enter the dorm,” Flinchum said.

Investigators have not found the hard drive to Cho’s computers, Flaherty said. Video Watch new details on shooting investigation »

“That’s a piece of evidence we would love to find, along with his cell phone and possibly some other documents,” he said.

This is why I think the state panel looking into what happened at Virginia Tech is a joke. At the end of the investigation, they’ll have as many answers as the rest of us. None.

Search of Tech duck pond turns up nothing:

The search of a drained duck pond at Virginia Tech turned up no clues behind the massacre perpetrated by Cho Seung Hui.

Corinne Geller of the state police says divers worked in shifts from Tuesday to yesterday evening, searching through three feet of muck with a metal detector and their hands. She calls “an exhausting search.”

She said the divers weren’t looking for anything specific, but were doing a more thorough investigation of a student’s report that someone resembling Seung-Hui Cho (sung-wee joh) was near the pond between the time he killed two students in a dormitory and 30 people in a classroom building on April 16th.

The hard drive from Cho’s computer is still among the missing.

State Police to search Virginia Tech duck pond for evidence:

The Virginia State Police will be checking a drained duck pond at Virginia Tech in hopes of finding more evidence about the Virginia Tech massacre.

State Police spokeswoman Corinne Geller won’t say what investigators might be looking for. She says they’re following leads and looking for any potential evidence. Once the water drains, teams will conduct grid searches looking for anything that might be beneath the water.

It’s been theorized that they are looking for the missing hard drive that Cho took from his computer.

Va. Tech Shooter Seen as ‘Collector of Injustice’:

The feds have finally released their assessment of Cho Seung-Hui and it’s nothing really surprising.

Federal agents investigating the April 16 shootings at Virginia Tech think Seung Hui Cho displayed many of the same characteristics of a criminal behavioral profile called the “Collector of Injustice,” or someone who considers any misfortune against him the fault or responsibility of others.

Agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives also think Cho mentally and physically tried to transform himself into an alter ego he called “Ax Ishmael” before his rampage.

Investigators think “Ax Ishmael” is based on the biblical figure Ishmael, the son of Hagar, a maidservant to Sarah, and the prophet Abraham. Ishmael lived as an outcast, and his brother Isaac was favored. Writings that Cho left in his dorm room, sent to the Virginia Tech English Department and mailed to NBC reveal twisted references to religion as part of his identity.

“It is always someone else’s fault, and the world is out to get them,” Bart McEntire, the resident agent in charge of the ATF’s Roanoke office, said in describing people who fit the profile. Eventually, the person’s compilation of wrongs becomes overloaded, and he lashes out violently to right them and get even with those who he believes have caused him misfortune and ridicule.

The manifesto that Cho left in his dorm room, with other writings that investigators have studied, indicate that Cho believed that people had no respect for him or others he perceived were like him, and that he planned to do something about it. In one writing, he warned: “Kill yourselves or you will never know how the dorky kid that [you] publicly humiliated and spat on will come behind you and slash your throats. . . . Kill yourselves or you will never know the hour the little kid will come with hundreds of rounds of ammunition on his back to shoot you down.”

In another, he sarcastically thanked everyone who had treated him as a “filthy street dog” and an “ugly, little, retarded, low-life kid.”

Cho, 23, of Centreville, whose family was religious and had sought help for him from a Woodbridge church, repeatedly made religious references. He said that he had been “crucified” and that, as with Jesus, his actions would set people free. He called himself a “martyr” who would “sacrifice” his life. He wrote that he would go down in history as the “Jesus Christ of the Weak and Defenseless.” He thought his actions would inspire others to fight back and get even.

Among the writings, Cho included three pictures of himself, which investigators think show how his self-image progressed. In the first picture, he is smiling. In the next, his arms are outstretched like Jesus’s on the cross. And in the third, his arms are crossed as if he is lying dead in a coffin, agents said.

As part of his physical transformation, investigators have said, he methodically bought weapons and clothes for his killing spree. They have documented his purchases in detail, from the cargo pants he wore in Norris Hall to the hundreds of rounds of ammunition he carried and his visits to a nearby firing range.

When he was ready, he wrote: “I am Ax Ishmael.”

Police have not discovered why he uses the word “Ax,” but his writings suggest he identified with Ishmael. According to some religious scholars, Ishmael held his brothers in contempt, despised the rituals of society and considered himself to be free of social control.

The writings also reveal that Cho had decided to strike out against those who had committed what he perceived were injustices against him: “I say we take up the cross, Children of Ishmael, take up our guns and knives . . . and take no prisoners and spare no lives.”

What a self-absorbed little prick. Comparing himself to Jesus Christ is the ultimate in arrogance. Christ didn’t have to kill anybody to get his message across. You were no Christ. You were no prophet. You are no martyr. You were no avenging angel. You were the world’s greatest coward and in time your name will be forgotten and you’ll be nothing more than a footnote in history.