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| Virginia Tech Shooting: Gunman Identified As Cho Seung-Hui By Staff Apr 17, 2007 |
Virginia Tech Shooter Identified - The gunman who slaughtered 33 people including himself at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg. has been identified. The gunman, Cho Seung-Hui, 23, a senior from South Korea who was in the English department at Virginia Tech and lived on campus, began cutting down his victims in what is believed to be two separate attacks two hours apart before the university could get a handle on what was happening and warn students. The bloodbath ended with the gunman committing suicide and marring the picturesque Blue Ridge Mountains campus with unspeakable tragedy forever. It was the deadliest shooting rampage in modern U.S. history. Investigators have no motive for the attack, although it has been rumored that Seung-Hui was looking for his girlfriend. He may have been planning the attacks for weeks and the bomb threats may very well have been Seung-Hui testing security. "Today the university was struck with a tragedy that we consider of monumental proportions," Virginia Tech President Charles Steger said Monday. "The university is shocked and indeed horrified." Steger has been besieged with questions about the university's handling of the emergency and whether it reacted appropriately and swiftly enough to warn students and protect them after the first initial sounds of gunfire. Some students have bitterly complained that there were no public-address announcements and they received no warning from the university until an e-mail that arrived two hours after the first shots broke the serene campus silence with the gunman striking again. Wielding two 9mm handguns and carrying multiple clips of ammo, the shooter opened fire at about 7:15 a.m. on the fourth floor of West Ambler Johnston, a high-rise coed dormitory with a capacity of 895. Two people were killed be fore the killer stormed Norris Hall, a building a clearly on the other side of the 2,600-acre campus - a half-mile away - where 31 others were killed, including the gunman, who put a bullet in his head. Many of the doors in the Norris Hall were found chained from the inside, apparently by the shooter. At least 15 people have been injured, some seriously. Some students were observed jumped from windows as high as 4 stories in a panic. At an evening news conference, Police Chief Wendell Flinchum would not dismiss the possibility that a second shooter or a co-conspirator was involved. He stated that authorities had interviewed a male who was a "person of interest" in the dorm shooting who knew one of the victims, but declined to offer further details. Ballistics tests have determined that the same firearms were used in both shootings. Until Monday, the deadliest shooting in modern U.S. history was in Killeen, Texas, in 1991. George Hennard used his pickup truck to ram into a Luby's Cafeteria and shot 23 people to death, then himself. The massacre Monday took place nearly eight years to the day after the Columbine High bloodbath near Littleton, Colo. It was also Holocaust Survivors Day. Ironically, one of the deceased was a holocaust survivor. List Of Confirmed Deceased (courtesy Collegiate Times) Maxine Turner Henry Lee Matt La Porte Jamie Bishop G.V. Loganathan Juan Ortiz Jarrett Lane Ryan Clark Leslie Sherman Caitlin Hammaren Liviu Librescu Kevin Granata Reema Samaha Emily Hilscher |
