Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Gunman was 'very troubled’
An English professor alerted university officials that Cho Seung-Hui was displaying very disturbing behavior.
AP photo
Cho Seung-Hui, 23, was identified Tuesday as the gunman in the Virginia Tech shootings on Monday.
Stephanie Klein-Davis | The Roanoke Times
John Markell, owner of Roanoke Firearms holds a Glock 19, Austrian 9 mm pistol, similar to the one Cho Seung-Hui purchased.
The Roanoke Times | File
Lucinda Roy
Interactive
Map
BLACKSBURG — Cho Seung-Hui’s actions and writings were so troubling to a Virginia Tech English professor three semesters ago that she alerted university officials, counselors and Virginia Tech police.
When someone spoke to him, he waited 10 to 20 seconds to respond, Lucinda Roy said Tuesday. In the classroom, Cho took photos of other classmates without their permission, always wore a hat and sunglasses, spoke in a whisper, and once wrote a poem that was so disturbing he was pulled out of an English class.
“All of those signs, and I’ve been in teaching a long time, signified to me that this was a student who was very troubled,” Roy said.
School and police officials tried to help, she said, but couldn’t force Cho into counseling “because of rules and regulations.” He had not threatened anyone directly, she said.
A Tech spokesman did not immediately return a message seeking comment Tuesday night.
Roy said she felt as though some of Cho’s writings, including a poem for class and a letter written to her, had an underlying threat. But there was no explicit threat, she said, and Cho, confronted about the writings, said they were only satire.
A native of South Korea who moved to the United States as a child, the 23-year-old Virginia Tech senior was named Tuesday morning by Tech police as the suspected gunman in Monday’s massacre on campus that claimed 33 lives, including Cho’s.
As the day wore on Tuesday, more details about Cho began to emerge, each seemingly more alarming than the last.
A law enforcement official familiar with the investigation said he believed a note found in a dorm room that mentioned rich kids and others on campus was written by Cho. The official also confirmed that Cho was found with words scrawled in red on his arm.
The Associated Press reported that a law enforcement official who read the note described it as a typed, eight-page rant against rich kids and religion. “You caused me to do this,” the official quoted the note as saying. He said Cho indicated in the letter that the end was near and that there was a deed to be done.
The Washington Post quoted law enforcement sources as saying Cho had the words “Ismail Ax” on one of his arms. It’s unclear what the words mean.
A search warrant affidavit filed in Montgomery County Circuit Court revealed that a written bomb threat directed at Virginia Tech engineering school department buildings was found Monday at the scene of the mass shooting at Norris Hall and was likely penned by Cho.
Officials haven’t said whether they believe Cho was responsible for bomb threats that closed buildings on campus April 2 and Friday .
Finally, Cho bought two handguns — a 9 mm and a .22-caliber — in just over a month, and apparently obliterated the serial numbers on both, according to the law enforcement official familiar with the investigation.
Roy, the English professor, declined to say what Cho wrote about in his fall 2005 poetry workshop class.
Four other English teachers had voiced concern about him to her, she said. As the English department chairwoman at the time, she agreed to teach him one-on-one for the rest of the semester.
He made her so uncomfortable, she said, that “I had my assistant ready, ready to call for help if I needed it.”
Toward the end of the semester Roy felt she was making progress with Cho, she said. He finally agreed to take off his sunglasses, and she asked him about his life.
“He said 'I am so lonely,’ and I knew that that was true and I felt terrible for him,” she said. “I was always so worried that he was suicidal.”
Roy said Cho told her that he was getting counseling, but she does not know if that was true.
Cho graduated in 2003 from Westfield High School in Chantilly.
Mike Campbell, who was Westfield’s assistant principal at the time and now is principal of Centreville High School, said he remembered Cho but that “nothing really stands out” about him.
With 3,200 students and about 800 seniors, Westfield, which opened in 2000, is the largest high school in the state, Campbell said.
Tech starting quarterback Sean Glennon graduated from Westfield the year after Cho but didn’t know him.
Asked what he thought when he realized he had gone to high school with the man accused of killing so many of his fellow Hokies, Glennon said: “The whole Virginia Tech thing here hits so close to home because it’s my college. And then to find out that the person involved is from my other home is just unbelievable.”
Tuesday afternoon, the Centreville neighborhood where Cho’s family lives in a town house was blocked by police, who kept media from entering. More than half a dozen TV trucks were parked outside a blockade.
His family members couldn’t be reached for comment.
Cho’s status as a loner could have played a factor in his role as the gunman in the worst mass shooting in U.S. history, according to a Radford University criminologist.
Cho could have been thinking, “Since I am unrecognizable, I have not made a mark on the world. When I go out, I want to make the biggest mark I can,” said Tod Burke.
Still, it was unclear late Tuesday what Cho’s motive might have been, and, although ballistics tests showed that one of the guns found at the Norris Hall massacre was used to fatally shoot two people earlier Monday at West Ambler Johnston Hall, it wasn’t confirmed by authorities that Cho was responsible for both.
The law enforcement official familiar with the investigation said Cho bought the Walther P22 on Feb. 9 from JND Pawnbrokers in Blacksburg. The owner of the pawn shop could not be reached for comment Tuesday evening.
Joe Dowdy, owner of JND Pawnbrokers, said Wednesday that he did the background check and other paperwork that allowed Cho Seung-Hui to purchase one of two handguns used in the shootings. But he said he only collected a $30 processing fee, and that the actual seller was out of state. He declined to identify the seller or the seller's location.
Cho purchased the Glock 19 on March 12 at Roanoke Firearms on Cove Road, said ATF spokesman Mike Campbell.
He charged $571 on a credit card for the Glock and a box of 50 bullets, said John Markell, owner of Roanoke Firearms. The Glock holds 15 rounds in a magazine and one in the chamber.
Markell said that three ATF agents visited his store Monday and said the Glock had been used in the mass shooting.
“It’s bad enough watching the news to find out what he did,” Markell said of Cho. “But to find out he bought it here makes it so much worse.”
Although the serial number had been destroyed, ATF agents traced the weapon using a receipt for the gun purchase found in Cho’s backpack in Norris Hall, according to the law enforcement official.
Markell said Cho’s behavior when he bought the gun raised no red flags.
“The sale was so straightforward,” Markell said. “There’s nothing that stood out.”
Cho produced a Virginia driver’s licence, a personal checkbook displaying the same address and an immigration card.
Legal permanent residents of the U.S. may buy guns if they produce proper identification. Virginia State Police conduct background checks on gun purchases.
Cho has been a legal permanent U.S. resident since he entered the country through Detroit with his parents on Sept. 2, 1992, when he was 8 years old, said Chris Bentley, a spokesman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Cho last renewed his green card Nov. 27, 2003. For the renewal, which is done every 10 years, his fingerprints were taken and checked against national law enforcement records.
Had he had any criminal convictions, he would not have been able to renew, Bentley said.
Virginia State Police searched Cho’s dorm room at 2121 Harper Hall just after 9 p.m. Monday, looking for weapons, ammunition and instructional manuals for acts of mass destruction or acts of terror, according to a search warrant affidavit filed in Montgomery County Circuit Court.
They took a computer and compact disks, chain, a Dremel filing tool, several books and notebooks and sheets of green graph paper.
The warrant does not say what, if anything was written on the paper or what sort of books were found.
According to a statement on Tech’s Web site, “investigators are still determining the evidentiary value of papers and assorted items” seized from Cho’s dorm room.
On Tuesday afternoon, Harper Hall resembled most other dormitories on campus — increasingly vacant.
Students wheeled their backpacks and suitcases outdoors, scurrying past reporters, with heads down.
Outside, 19-year-old Brittany Irving was shivering, recalling what she could about Cho.
The problem was, she didn’t know him, and she didn’t even know anyone in her building was associated with the massacre until she watched television reports in the morning.
“I’m still shocked,” she said. “This is just creepy.”
Staff writers Randy King, Doug Doughty, Anna Mallory and Michael Sluss contributed to this report.
