Tragedy at Virginia Tech

[MadtownPacker]

It is obvious you have never dealt with a violent situation in real life. Everything happens fast and you dont have time to think. It doesnt take long to get shot and I doubt you are faster then a bullet.

You can feel like a "cowboy" typing away on your keyboard but when the action is live and you are playing for keeps it all changes. Yes it would have been nice if someone had took this guy down somehow but the fact he shot 30+ persons tells me he meant business.

[HarveyWallbangers]

Well, the police and the University president will have a lot of explaining to do why they didn't warn ANYONE that there was a murderer on the loose. I mean students were walking about the campus unaware that their is a crazed gunman at large. This is a total police screwup and I think the university president could even lose his job over it.

Why are people so quick to point fingers like this? The university and police have said they thought they were dealing with a domestic dispute. It's not like nobody ever gets murdered. Who could have foreseen that this would happen? How much could they have really stopped? They obviously didn't have good eyewitnesses because they had taken another guy in custody, so it's not like they had an ID on this guy. I always love when people are quick to condemn the authorities over something like this. It's not like they everything can be shut down every time there's a murder. There isn't all that much that can be done to prevent something like this.

[Partial]

Everyone is on their guard at school today. It is very apparent in the computer lab. People just seem on edge. Especially myself. Without knowing anything about the shooters motives, etc. one has to wonder whether it was a one-school thing out of anger, a nation-wide terrorist attack that one person jumped the gun on, etc.

It's kind of creepy, to be honest.

MTP you know you would have tried to take the guy down too. It has nothing to do with being a cowboy it has more to do with my view on life, my view on glory, and my view on how one should react in that situation. If it took my life to safe those of twenty more people, I would gladly give it at this stage. I don't have kids or a family or anything like that.

[LL2]

You can feel like a "cowboy" typing away on your keyboard but when the action is live and you are playing for keeps it all changes. Yes it would have been nice if someone had took this guy down somehow but the fact he shot 30+ persons tells me he meant business.

Exactly. I wondered why no one took him out sooner, but to say that is thinking I would’ve been more brave. I’ve never been in that situation and I probably would’ve been scared with my tail between my legs. I did get robbed once back in college delivering pizzas and a guy pulled a big knife on me and ask for the pizzas and all my money. At that moment I didn’t care I gave him everything and he took off. He set up the whole thing, arranging a delivery to a place he didn’t live and hid behind the bushes and waited until I showed up. I quit my job that day, because it scared the crap out of me. That was about 15 years ago, so I can imagine something like this was 10 times more horrifying for these college kids. I also watched the video taped by the person who got it on his cell phone last night and for a good 20 seconds all you could hear is one shot after another. I do not think the students had time to react, and not until he left the room and they could brace the door shut.

[pacfan]

Until you have been fired upon, knowing the shooter intends to end your life, I don't think anybody can predict how they will act.

[MadtownPacker]

I mean students were walking about the campus unaware that their is a crazed gunman at large.

Thats the thing. No one knew he was a crazed gunman at first. By that time he had already killed everyone and offed himself.

[Little Whiskey]

Blaming the schools police or guns is just plain foolish. Police and the school thought it was a single act in the dorm room, that took place in the morning. how the hell are they supposed to tell 20000 kids to get the hell off campus. who knows were he would have popped up next. what if they told the kids to stay in their dorms, then the dude barracades those doors shut and starts shooting. what about all the commuters who don't live on campus, how the hell do you contact each of them. impossible.

I agree with some of the statements earlier about guns. imagine if Va tech allowed concealed weapons. you think this idiot would have thought twice about taking shots in a crowded building. chances are pretty good at least one person would have been carrying. might as well blame imagration. since we are blaming every thing else other than this idiot!!

[PaCkFan_n_MD]

NBC, MSNBC and news services
Updated: 13 minutes ago

BLACKSBURG, Va. - A 23-year-old senior from South Korea whose creative writing was so disturbing that he was referred to the school’s counseling service was behind the massacre of at least 30 people locked inside a university classroom building in the deadliest shooting rampage in modern U.S. history, the university said Tuesday.

Ballistics tests also found that one of the guns used in that attack was also used in a shooting two hours earlier at a dormitory that left two people dead at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Virginia State Police said.

Police identified the shooter as Cho Seung-Hui (pronounced Choh Suhng-whee), of Centreville, Va., who was a senior in the English Department at Virginia Tech. Cho, a resident alien who immigrated to the United States from South Korea in 1992, lived on campus in Harper Residence Hall.

The bloodbath ended with Cho’s suicide, bringing the death toll from two separate shootings — first at the dormitory, then in a classroom building — to 33 and stamping the campus in the picturesque Blue Ridge Mountains with unspeakable tragedy.

‘He was a loner’
Professor Carolyn Rude, chairwoman of the university’s English department, said she did not personally know the gunman. But she said she spoke with Lucinda Roy, the department’s director of creative writing, who had Cho in one of her classes and described him as “troubled.”

“There was some concern about him,” Rude told The Associated Press. “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. But we’re all alert to not ignore things ike this.”

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

NBC News’ Pete Williams reported that police had found a note in which Cho listed “random grievances,” but few other details were immediately available. That seemed in keeping for a young man who apparently left little impression in the Virginia Tech community.

“He was a loner, and we’re having difficulty finding information about him,” said Larry Hincker, the university’s associate vice president for community relations.

Cho’s fellow residents of Harper Hall said few people knew the gunman, who kept to himself.

“He can’t have been an outgoing kind of person,” Meredith Daly, 19, of Danville, Va., told MSNBC.com’s Bill Dedman.

Students live six to a suite, said Stephen Scott, a freshman engineering student from Marlton, N.J., and do not necessarily know other residents.

Scott said police and FBI agents went through the dorm Monday night showing a picture of Cho and trying to find anybody who recognized or knew him. He did not know whether they were successful.

In Centreville, where Cho’s family lived in an off-white, two-story townhouse, people who knew Cho concurred that he kept to himself.

“He was very quiet, always by himself,” said Abdul Shash, a neighbor. Shash said Cho spent a lot of his free time playing basketball and would not respond if someone greeted him. He described the family as quiet.

South Korea’s Foreign Ministry expressed its condolences, saying that there was no known motive for the shootings and that South Korea hoped the tragedy would not “stir up racial prejudice or confrontation.”

Ballistics evidence points to student
Two law enforcement officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because the information had not been officially announced, said Cho’s fingerprints were found on the two guns used in the shootings. The serial numbers had been filed off, the officials said.

Law enforcement officials told Williams that Cho was carrying a backpack that contained receipts for the purchase of a Glock 9mm pistol in March. As a permanent legal resident, Cho was eligible to buy a handgun unless he had been convicted of any felony criminal charges.

Cho renewed his green card in late 2003 and would have undergone a background check at that time, immigration officials told NBC affiliate WSLS-TV of Roanoke. If a criminal record had showed up then, officials would have denied the renewal, they said.

Col. Steve Flaherty, superintendent of the Virginia State Police, said it was reasonable to assume that Cho was the shooter in both attacks but that the link was yet definitive.

“There’s no evidence of any accomplice at either event, but we’re exploring the possibility,” he said.

At least 26 people were taken to hospitals after the second attack, some of them seriously injured. Twelve students remained in hospitals in stable condition Tuesday, and most were expected to be released soon, NBC News’ Michelle Kosinski reported from Montgomery Regional Medical Center.

Bush to attend service
State, local and federal investigators spent the night collecting, processing and analyzing evidence from within Norris Hall, which housed engineering classes, offices and laboratories. The deceased were recovered from at least four classrooms on the second floor and a stairwell. Cho was discovered in a classroom among the victims.

All of the deceased were transported to the medical examiner’s office in Roanoke for examination and identification. The names of the deceased students and faculty will be released once all of the victims are positively identified and their families are notified.

President Bush planned to attend a memorial service Tuesday afternoon at the university, the White House said, and Gov. Timothy Kaine was flying back to Virginia from Tokyo for the 2 p.m. convocation.

[Kiwon]

The gunman was a South Korean!

Oh boy, this is going to be dissected to the nth degree here.

Unfortunately these things bring out the best and worst in people and the media here will be quick to focus on any reprisals against South Koreans in the U.S.. The American students here could very well face a backlash if something does happen.

The effects of this news will last a long time...

[PaCkFan_n_MD]

I think race is irrelevant. Every race has good and bad people. Some black people are bad and some are good, some white people are bad and some are good, etc. It's not fair to pen a whole race on the actions of a few.

[Joemailman]

This incident does in a way give credence to arguments made by people on both sides of the gun control issue. Proponents of gun control will claim that he could not have killed this many people if not for the availability of hand guns. That is likely true. Opponents of gun control will claim, and already have, that if one of the students in the hall had been armed, he could have been stopped before killing 32 people. That is also likely true. The question I guess is whether our society would be safer as a whole if we had large numbers of people carrying around hand guns. How many domestic disturbances that end relatively harmlessly would end more tragically if one of the people involved were armed? Hard to know for sure. It is a tough issue.

[MJZiggy]

Joe, although certainly in this case, the argument will revolve around handguns, I believe the issue in gun control is more about semi-automatic handguns. I think there's a big difference between being able to pull the trigger 6 times and being able to spray a room with bullets. I'm not against handguns in general (or even legally concealing them), but if the purpose of the gun is to hunt and not to kill people, do you really need to shoot the deer 20 times?

[Kiwon]

I think race is irrelevant. Every race has good and bad people. Some black people are bad and some are good, some white people are bad and some are good, etc. It's not fair to pen a whole race on the actions of a few.

All true. Yet at the same time you have to realize that Korean culture is group-oriented and they operate from that basis while Americans are off-the-scale individualistic.

Even though this guy has apparently been in the U.S. for 14-15 years, the average South Korean citizen and the government itself views this student to one degree or another as representing both the country and the South Korean people/culture.

Right now South Korean diplomats are on their way to West Virginia. They will apologize several times over the actions of this troubled person. I'm sure that they will make a direct, in-person apology to the families of the victims. Rightly or wrongly, they will assume part of the responsibility for the crimes that Cho, Seung-Hui committed. The racial aspect of this is the first thing in their minds.

It's just a very different worldview from America.

[Merlin]

My thoughts and prayers go out to all of the victims of this horrendous crime.

Here is what will happen as a result of this:

1) People will start walking the other way anytime they see anyone of Asian decent. - You can bet that the media will find the two people in the country that do it and apply that to the whole country thus creating more racism.

2) Congress will drum up some more useless "gun control" legislation. - When will they get it through their heads that when guns are banned only criminals will have them?

3) The university will be sued. - Hypocrisy at it's finest. You can't sue the killer, you know, the one responsible.

4) The shooter will become the victim and martyr. - Blame everyone but the killer (notice I did say "killer" and not "disturbed student").

5) Some kind of music will be blamed (as has already been posted here). - Music doesn't kill people.

What should happen:

1) Security measures should be gone over to help reduce the chance of this happening again. But, they won't be good enough because people don't want to be inconvenienced and that will stop short of prevention (which I doubt you could ever totally prevent it from happening).

2) The media needs to drop the "Asian" decent from his description because we aren't looking for him, we have him and he is taking the eternal dirt nap. He should be referred to as the "killer" or "murderer" of 32 innocent people. I don't care if he was purple, the media has done it's fair sgare of spreading and condoning racism as it is.

3) A private fund should be set up to help the families pay for burial and any other expenses. This should not come out of the tax base. The private sector will donate more then is needed and the remainder should be set up ion a scholarship fund in the names of these individuals.

[pacfan]

I think race is irrelevant. Every race has good and bad people. Some black people are bad and some are good, some white people are bad and some are good, etc. It's not fair to pen a whole race on the actions of a few.

All true. Yet at the same time you have to realize that Korean culture is group-oriented and they operate from that basis while Americans are off-the-scale individualistic.

Even though this guy has apparently been in the U.S. for 14-15 years, the average South Korean citizen and the government itself views this student to one degree or another as representing both the country and the South Korean people/culture.

Right now South Korean diplomats are on the same to West Virginia. They will apologize several times over the actions of this troubled person. I'm sure that they will make a direct, in-person apology to the families of the victims. Rightly or wrongly, they will assume part of the responsibility for the crimes that Cho, Seung-Hui committed. The racial aspect of this is the first thing in their minds.

It's just a very different worldview from America.

South Korean is national or even a political indentity, not racial.