正文
Va. Tech shooter was laughed at
By MATT APUZZO, Associated Press Writer 6 minutes ago
BLACKSBURG, Va. - Long before he boiled over, 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 school boy in suburban Washington, 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, David srecalled. 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.
Cho shot 32 people to death and committed suicide Monday in the deadliest one-man shooting ramp age in modern U.S. history. The high school classmates\' accounts add to the psychological portrait that is beginning to take shape, and could shed light on the video rant Chomailed to NBC in the middle of his ramp age at Virginia Tech.
In the often-incoherent video, the 23-year-old Cho portrays himself aspersecuted and rants about rich kids.
Your Mercedes wasn\'t enough, you brats, says Cho, who came to theU.S. at about age 8 in 1992 and whose parents work at a dry cleanersin suburban Washington. Your golden necklaces weren\'t enough, yousnobs. Your trust funds wasn\'t enough. Your vodka and cognac wasn\'tenough. All your debaucheries weren\'t enough. Those weren\'t enough tofulfill your hedonistic needs. You had everything.
Among the victims of the massacre were two other Westfield Highgraduates: Reema Samaha and Erin Peterson. Both young women graduatedfrom the high school last year. Police said it is not clear whetherCho singled them out.
Stephanie Roberts, 22, a fellow member of Cho\'s graduating class atWestfield High, said she never witnessed anyone picking on Cho in highschool.
I just remember he was a shy kid who didn\'t really want to talk toanybody, she said. I guess a lot of people felt like maybe there wasa language barrier.
But she said friends of hers who went to middle school with Cho toldher they recalled him getting picked on there.
There were just some people who were really mean to him and theywould push him down and laugh at him, Roberts said Wednesday. Hedidn\'t speak English really well and they would really make fun ofhim.
Virginia Tech student Alison Heck said a suitemate of hers on campus —
Christina Lilick — found a mysterious question mark scrawled on the dry erase board on her door. Lilick went to the same high school asCho, according to Lilick\'s Facebook page. Cho once scrawled a questionmark on the sign-in sheet on the first day of a literature class, and other students came to know him as the question mark kid.
I don\'t know if she knew that it was him for sure, Heck said. I doremember that that fall that she was being stalked and she hadmentioned the question mark. And there was a question mark on herdoor.
Heck added: She just let us know about it just in case there was astrange person walking around our suite.
Lilick could not immediately be located for comment, via e-mail or telephone.
Regan Wilder, 21, who attended Virginia Tech, high school and middle school with Cho, said she was in several classes with Cho in highschool, including advanced-placement calculus and Spanish. She said hewalked around with his head down, and almost never spoke. And when hedid, it was a real low mutter, like a whisper.
As part of an exam in Spanish class, students had to answer questionsin Spanish on tape, and other students were so curious to know whatCho sounded like that they waited eagerly for the teacher to play hisrecording, she said. She said that on the tape, he did not speakconfidently but did seem to know Spanish.
Wilder recalled high school teachers trying to get him to participate,but he would only shrug his shoulders or he\'d give like two-wordresponses, and I think it just got to the point where teachers justgave up because they realized he wasn\'t going to come out of the shellhe was in, so they just kind of passed him over for the most part astime went on.
She said she was sure Cho probably was picked on in middle school, butso was everyone else. And it didn\'t seem as if English was the problemfor him, she said. If he didn\'t speak English well, there were severalother Korean students he could have reached out to for friendship, buthe didn\'t, she said.
Wilder said Cho wasn\'t any friendlier in college, where he always hadthat same damn blank stare, like glare, on his face. And I\'d alwaystry to make eye contact with him because I recognized the kid becauseI\'d seen him for six years, but he\'d always just look right past youlike you weren\'t there.
In other developments, Gov. Timothy Kaine is appointing a five- toseven-member panel to investigate the shootings, the governor\'s officesaid. The panel will review Cho\'s mental health history and how policeresponded to the tragedy. The panel will a report in two tothree months.
University officials also announced that all of Cho\'s student victimswould be awarded degrees posthumously, and that other studentsterrorized by the shootings might be allowed to end the semesterimmediately without consequences.
Eleven people hurt in the attack remained hospitalized, at least onein serious condition.
Authorities on Wednesday disclosed that more than a year before themassacre, Cho had been accused of sending unwanted messages to twowomen and was taken to a psychiatric hospital on a magistrate\'s ordersand was pronounced a danger to himself. But he was released withorders to undergo outpatient treatment.
Also, Cho\'s twisted, violence-filled writings and menacing,uncommunicative demeanor had disturbed professors and students so muchthat he was removed from one English class and was repeatedly urged toget counseling.
On Wednesday, NBC received a package containing a rambling and oftenincoherent 23-page written statement from Cho, 28 video clips and 43photos — many of them showing Cho, in a military-style vest andbackward baseball cap, brandishing handguns. A Postal Service timestamp reads 9:01 a.m. — between the two attacks on campus.
The package helps explain one mystery: where the gunman was and whathe did during that two-hour window between the first burst of gunfire,at a high-rise dorm, and the second attack, at a classroom building.
You had a hundred billion chances and ways to have avoided today, asnarling Cho says on video. But you decided to spill my blood. Youforced me into a corner and gave me only one option. The decision wasyours. Now you have blood on your hands that will never wash off.
Col. Steve Flaherty, superintendent of the Virginia State Police, saidThursday that the material contained little they did not already know.Flaherty said he was disappointed that NBC decided to broadcast partsof it.
I just hate that a lot of people not used to seeing that type ofimage had to see it, he said.
I saw his picture on TV, and when I did I just got chills, saidKristy Venning, a junior from Franklin County, Va. There\'s really nowords. It shows he put so much thought into this and I think it\'ssick.
With a backlash developing against the media for airing the images,Fox News said it would stop running them, and other networks said theywould severely limit their use.
It has value as breaking news, said ABC News spokesman Jeffrey Schneider, but then becomes practically pornographic as it is just repeated ad nauseam.
___
Associated Press writers Allen G. Breed, Vicki Smith, Sue Lindsey andJustin Pope in Blacksburg, Va.; Matt Barakat in Richmond, Va.; ColleenLong, Tom Hays and Jake Coyle in New York; and Lara Jakes Jordan,Sarah Karush and Sharon Theimer in Washington contributed to this report.
By MATT APUZZO, Associated Press Writer 6 minutes ago
BLACKSBURG, Va. - Long before he boiled over, 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 school boy in suburban Washington, 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, David srecalled. 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.
Cho shot 32 people to death and committed suicide Monday in the deadliest one-man shooting ramp age in modern U.S. history. The high school classmates\' accounts add to the psychological portrait that is beginning to take shape, and could shed light on the video rant Chomailed to NBC in the middle of his ramp age at Virginia Tech.
In the often-incoherent video, the 23-year-old Cho portrays himself aspersecuted and rants about rich kids.
Your Mercedes wasn\'t enough, you brats, says Cho, who came to theU.S. at about age 8 in 1992 and whose parents work at a dry cleanersin suburban Washington. Your golden necklaces weren\'t enough, yousnobs. Your trust funds wasn\'t enough. Your vodka and cognac wasn\'tenough. All your debaucheries weren\'t enough. Those weren\'t enough tofulfill your hedonistic needs. You had everything.
Among the victims of the massacre were two other Westfield Highgraduates: Reema Samaha and Erin Peterson. Both young women graduatedfrom the high school last year. Police said it is not clear whetherCho singled them out.
Stephanie Roberts, 22, a fellow member of Cho\'s graduating class atWestfield High, said she never witnessed anyone picking on Cho in highschool.
I just remember he was a shy kid who didn\'t really want to talk toanybody, she said. I guess a lot of people felt like maybe there wasa language barrier.
But she said friends of hers who went to middle school with Cho toldher they recalled him getting picked on there.
There were just some people who were really mean to him and theywould push him down and laugh at him, Roberts said Wednesday. Hedidn\'t speak English really well and they would really make fun ofhim.
Virginia Tech student Alison Heck said a suitemate of hers on campus —
Christina Lilick — found a mysterious question mark scrawled on the dry erase board on her door. Lilick went to the same high school asCho, according to Lilick\'s Facebook page. Cho once scrawled a questionmark on the sign-in sheet on the first day of a literature class, and other students came to know him as the question mark kid.
I don\'t know if she knew that it was him for sure, Heck said. I doremember that that fall that she was being stalked and she hadmentioned the question mark. And there was a question mark on herdoor.
Heck added: She just let us know about it just in case there was astrange person walking around our suite.
Lilick could not immediately be located for comment, via e-mail or telephone.
Regan Wilder, 21, who attended Virginia Tech, high school and middle school with Cho, said she was in several classes with Cho in highschool, including advanced-placement calculus and Spanish. She said hewalked around with his head down, and almost never spoke. And when hedid, it was a real low mutter, like a whisper.
As part of an exam in Spanish class, students had to answer questionsin Spanish on tape, and other students were so curious to know whatCho sounded like that they waited eagerly for the teacher to play hisrecording, she said. She said that on the tape, he did not speakconfidently but did seem to know Spanish.
Wilder recalled high school teachers trying to get him to participate,but he would only shrug his shoulders or he\'d give like two-wordresponses, and I think it just got to the point where teachers justgave up because they realized he wasn\'t going to come out of the shellhe was in, so they just kind of passed him over for the most part astime went on.
She said she was sure Cho probably was picked on in middle school, butso was everyone else. And it didn\'t seem as if English was the problemfor him, she said. If he didn\'t speak English well, there were severalother Korean students he could have reached out to for friendship, buthe didn\'t, she said.
Wilder said Cho wasn\'t any friendlier in college, where he always hadthat same damn blank stare, like glare, on his face. And I\'d alwaystry to make eye contact with him because I recognized the kid becauseI\'d seen him for six years, but he\'d always just look right past youlike you weren\'t there.
In other developments, Gov. Timothy Kaine is appointing a five- toseven-member panel to investigate the shootings, the governor\'s officesaid. The panel will review Cho\'s mental health history and how policeresponded to the tragedy. The panel will a report in two tothree months.
University officials also announced that all of Cho\'s student victimswould be awarded degrees posthumously, and that other studentsterrorized by the shootings might be allowed to end the semesterimmediately without consequences.
Eleven people hurt in the attack remained hospitalized, at least onein serious condition.
Authorities on Wednesday disclosed that more than a year before themassacre, Cho had been accused of sending unwanted messages to twowomen and was taken to a psychiatric hospital on a magistrate\'s ordersand was pronounced a danger to himself. But he was released withorders to undergo outpatient treatment.
Also, Cho\'s twisted, violence-filled writings and menacing,uncommunicative demeanor had disturbed professors and students so muchthat he was removed from one English class and was repeatedly urged toget counseling.
On Wednesday, NBC received a package containing a rambling and oftenincoherent 23-page written statement from Cho, 28 video clips and 43photos — many of them showing Cho, in a military-style vest andbackward baseball cap, brandishing handguns. A Postal Service timestamp reads 9:01 a.m. — between the two attacks on campus.
The package helps explain one mystery: where the gunman was and whathe did during that two-hour window between the first burst of gunfire,at a high-rise dorm, and the second attack, at a classroom building.
You had a hundred billion chances and ways to have avoided today, asnarling Cho says on video. But you decided to spill my blood. Youforced me into a corner and gave me only one option. The decision wasyours. Now you have blood on your hands that will never wash off.
Col. Steve Flaherty, superintendent of the Virginia State Police, saidThursday that the material contained little they did not already know.Flaherty said he was disappointed that NBC decided to broadcast partsof it.
I just hate that a lot of people not used to seeing that type ofimage had to see it, he said.
I saw his picture on TV, and when I did I just got chills, saidKristy Venning, a junior from Franklin County, Va. There\'s really nowords. It shows he put so much thought into this and I think it\'ssick.
With a backlash developing against the media for airing the images,Fox News said it would stop running them, and other networks said theywould severely limit their use.
It has value as breaking news, said ABC News spokesman Jeffrey Schneider, but then becomes practically pornographic as it is just repeated ad nauseam.
___
Associated Press writers Allen G. Breed, Vicki Smith, Sue Lindsey andJustin Pope in Blacksburg, Va.; Matt Barakat in Richmond, Va.; ColleenLong, Tom Hays and Jake Coyle in New York; and Lara Jakes Jordan,Sarah Karush and Sharon Theimer in Washington contributed to this report.
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