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Investigators and witnesses Wednesday pieced together
a South Korean student’s path to mass murder on a US university
campus, as details emerged of possible missteps in the early hunt
for the killer.
Police identified the gunman in
Monday’s killing of 32 students and staff at Virginia Tech
University as Cho Seung Hui, 23, describing him as a student of
English whose quiet behavior and death-filled writings worried his
classmates.
Amid widespread anger among
survivors and relatives over the university’s failure to lock down
campus when a gunman was on the loose, investigators revealed they
may have initially been pursuing the wrong man, US media reported.
Police said that during a more
than two-hour gap between a first shooting Monday, in which a female
and male student were killed, and the second in which 31 were
killed, they were pursuing the boyfriend of the female victim, The
New York Times reported.
The female victim’s roommate
“told the police that [Karl D.] Thornhill, a student at nearby
Radford University, had guns at his town house,” the newspaper
said, quoting a police affidavit.
“The roommate told the police
that she had recently been at a shooting range with Mr. Thornhill,
the affidavit said, leading the police to believe he may have been
the gunman,” it said.
But as they questioned Thornhill,
shooting was reported at the Norris Hall engineering building.
The delay meant Cho apparently
had time to return to his room, take weapons and ammunition and head
to the engineering building where he chained doors shut from the
inside before shooting dead 30 people then turning his weapon on
himself.
Police search warrants said a
bomb threat note was found in the vicinity of Cho’s body which it
was “reasonable to believe” he had written. Cho was also
carrying knives on him, and at least one more knife along with
prescription medications for depression were found in his room.
Police recovered a 9mm handgun
and a .22-caliber handgun from the crime scene.
Cho, who came to the United
States from South Korea in 1992 when he was eight years old,
reportedly also left behind a rambling note venting his rage and
complaining about “rich kids.”
“You caused me to do this,”
he wrote in the several-page-long note that also railed against
“debauchery” and “deceitful charlatans.”
Cho had shown recent signs of
“violent, aberrant behavior,” including stalking women and
setting a fire in a dorm room, the Chicago Tribune said.
Fellow students in a playwriting
class remembered the killer as a mostly silent classmate who wrote
gory dramas in a juvenile tone.
“The plays had really twisted,
macabre violence that used weapons I wouldn’t have even thought
of,” wrote former classmate Ian MacFarlane who posted two of
Cho’s plays on aol.com.
“His writing, the plays, were
really morbid and grotesque,” student Stephanie Derry told the
college newspaper, the Collegiate Times.
“He would just sit and watch
us, but wouldn’t say anything. It was his lack of behavior that
really set him apart. He basically just kept to himself, very
isolated,” Derry said.
Victims of his rampage included a
Holocaust survivor who barricaded the classroom door to allow his
students to escape before finally being gunned down, as well as a
pair of Lebanese students, an Indian engineering expert and a
Canadian French teacher.
Steve Flaherty, superintendent of
state police, told reporters Cho had been living in a campus
dormitory. He was a resident alien in the United States.
Larry Hincker, associate
vice-president for university relations, described Cho as a
“loner.”
The shooting immediately renewed
concern over school security and access to guns that was rekindled
last year by a rash of shootings. The state of Virginia has some of
the weakest gun licensing requirements in the country.
The slayings sent shudders around
the world, especially in Seoul as shocked South Koreans came to
terms with the news that the gunman was a compatriot.
President Roh Moo Hyun offered
the American people condolences “from the bottom of my heart”
and other South Koreans expressed shock, shame and fears of a
racially motivated backlash against their compatriots in the US.
In Manila, President Arroyo on
Wednesday expressed her sympathy to the families of those gunned
down in the Virginia school.
“We are one with the world in
condoling with the victims of the senseless killings in Virginia
Tech University,” the President said in a statement.
“The unfortunate incident
magnifies the need to keep all campuses safe and secure at all times
as sanctuaries of learning for the youth,” she said.
 --AFP
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