New VTech thread: Roommate thinks videos were shot in dorm common area; Update: Cho watched “Old Boy” repeatedly; Update: WaPo reveals the Norris Hall shootings, minute by minute; Update: NBC posts parts of written manifesto
posted at 12:43 am on April 19, 2007 by Allahpundit
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Got a few loose ends and open questions to toss at you here, but first let’s dispense with this before word gets around and people start sending it to us. If you’re unfamiliar with NIN, be advised that it’s notoriously alarmist. There’s nothing on the wires right now about Cho having mentioned 9/11, and even if it turns out he did, what will it prove? Most of the ranting appears to be about Jesus and rich kids and revenge. He’s a disturbed nihilist with national traumas on the brain, per his Columbine reference, so don’t leap up and automatically scream “jihad!” if he happens to have free-associated himself into a WTC reference, too.
Now that we’ve addressed that, here’s an important timeline detail from NBC:
Karan Grewall, one of Cho’s roommates, said Wednesday night that Cho appeared to have shot the videos in their shared home.
It looks exactly like our common areas where we hang out every day,” Grewall told MSNBC-TV’s Joe Scarborough. “I can’t be sure, but the walls look exactly like our suite.”
The Times reported yesterday that another roommate, Joe Aust, returned to their room at 8 a.m. Monday morning — during the period between the two shootings — and looked in on Cho, but didn’t find him in his room. Which means the videos couldn’t have been shot on Monday or else Aust would have walked in on the filming. So when did Cho film them? He would have needed a long stretch of time where he could work uninterrupted, without fear of anyone coming home to find him waving guns around in front of a camera. One obvious possibility is spring break, but VT’s calendar says that started on March 2 and ended on March 11; Cho didn’t buy his second weapon until March 13, and he’s seen in the video brandishing two guns.
I have no answers, but I do want to note for the second time a tidbit from Tuesday’s Times that’s been bugging me ever since I read about it:
Earlier Tuesday, a single spent long-rifle shell was discovered on the sidewalk near the entrance to [Cho's family's] house [in Centreville, Virginia]. After the discovery, by news cameramen, police immediately moved reporters back and took the round away for investigation.
The link goes to the India Express, which preserves the original Times reporting that the shell was “long-rifle.” (The version of the story at the Times’s own website now omits those words, for whatever reason.) Why does it matter? Because Bob Owens tells me that “long-rifle” rounds can be fired in a .22 handgun like the one Cho had. It’s hard to believe that a spent shell that fits one of the murder weapons would be lying out in plain view near the Chos’ home, and yet wouldn’t be connected somehow to Cho himself. (Update: See update below.) Assuming that it is, it means he must have been home in Centreville — which is all the way across the state — sometime fairly recently and been messing around with ammo while he was there. Could he have shot the videos while he was there, too? Seems far-fetched, but he probably would have been able to work uninterrupted at home while his parents were out. Of course, this all depends on the shell having come from him; if it came from one of the dozens of cops who were swarming the area on Tuesday then forget it.
Enough speculation. I got an e-mail from a VT student tonight that answers a question I asked in another thread — namely, why Cho did his killing on the second floor of Norris Hall instead of the first. Reader Geoff writes:
I have a couple classes in Norris and can answer why Cho stayed on the 2nd floor. Norris is located on a slight hill and is shaped like an L. If you make an L in your left hand using your index finger and thumb, you get a general layout of Norris. Your index finger sits on top of the hill and runs parallel to the hill. Your thumb runs perpendicular to and down the hill. The two main entrances to Norris are at the tip of your index finger and the tip of your thumb. If Cho entered at the entrance that is at the tip of you index finger, he would be on the second floor without climbing any stairs. If he entered at the entrance that is at the tip of your thumb, he would be on the true first floor, and would have had to climb up the stairs to reach the 2nd floor. Seeing that my classmates he killed were not on the 3rd or 1st floor, I assume he entered at the entrance at the tip of your index finger.
Here’s a map. Norris is #132. He’s saying Cho entered at the entrance on the right, where 132 intersects with 130, and that left him on the second floor:
This photo of the entrance shows the hill Geoff describes. If Cho had chosen the other entrance (just out of frame on the left), we might have had a completely different set of victims. It’s actually worth asking why he didn’t choose the other entrance considering that his dorm was south and slightly west of Norris, and thus he would have passed it on his way to the second entrance. The answer, I guess, is that he didn’t go there from his dorm — indeed, if he had, he probably would have been in his room at 8 when Aust peeked in and there wouldn’t be a post office timestamp at 9:01 a.m. In all likelihood he came to Norris straight from the post office. Which, if I had to bet, I’d bet is located north and/or east of the building such that he arrived at that middle entrance first.
Here’s another great tip from a reader that I stupidly sat on when I got three hours ago, only to find it on the front page of the New York Times website an hour later. Responding to my theory in the last thread about Cho’s hammer being his “ax,” reader RLW writes:
If Cho meant to have an ax in his photo, wouldn’t he have gotten one instead of using a hammer to represent one? Was the hammer meant to be a hammer? He didn’t have a problem getting his guns or knives.
Oldboy is the second part of Park Chan-Wook’s “Vengeance trilogy.” A hammer is the weapon of choice in a single take fight in the middle of the film. Preceding that fight is the teeth pulling interrogation scene with the same hammer…
The movie is South Korean, but I would imagine that anyone likely to go on a spree killing would have it in his netflix queue, along with Battle Royale, which is Japanese, but is reputed to be barred from wide distribution in a post Columbine US. I know that back in the day, my teen angst bullsh*t friends in HS seemed to know about every murder/vampire/weird indie movie out there. The internet probably negates the need to have friends now.
Did it send him over the edge? I doubt it, but the iconography may have resonated with him, resulting in the hammer photo.
The protagonist had been imprisoned for 15 years and was seeking vengeance against an unknown tormentor and wreaking havoc with anyone that stood in his way.
Here’s the hammer scene from the movie.
That’s enough for now. I’ll leave you with two pieces: this ludicrous AP stpry on Cho’s sister, which offers no insights at all into the shooting except to imply that somehow, in some Michael Moore-ish way, it must be connected to Iraq, and a look at federal privacy laws governing mental illness by the Times. Money: “For the most part, universities cannot tell parents about their children’s problems without the student’s consent. They cannot release any information in a student’s medical record without consent. And they cannot put students on involuntary medical leave, just because they develop a serious mental illness.” Expect the law to change as a result of this case, and then to change back again in a few years when some overzealous college administrator has some poor, relatively stable kid involuntarily committed.
Update: I feel bad for having dumped on NIN when the fact is I’ve been reading their site for years. To be sure, they do sometimes get stuff right (and may well be right about Cho referencing 9/11), and even when they’re wrong they’re usually a fun read. There are enough people on the Web who don’t take terrorism seriously that I shouldn’t be knocking those on our side who occasionally take it too seriously, so ignore my earlier crankiness. If they’re right on this one, I’ll give them full credit.
Update: Speaking of jihad, Robert Spencer notes that Cho is already being praised on some Arabic-language Muslim forums and referred to as … Abu Musab al-Virgini.
Update: The backlash begins. According to Newsbusters, Meredith Vieira admitted this morning that the victims’ relatives who were scheduled to appear on the Today show have pulled out in protest of NBC’s decision to air Cho’s video. The New York Times quotes Brian Williams this way: “This was a sick business tonight, going on the air with this.”
Here’s the video of Lauer and Vieira this morning:
Update: Geoff from VTech has e-mailed again with further thoughts about why Cho would have chosen the second floor of Norris Hall and which direction he came from. Again, Norris is #132:
The main Blacksburg post office is actually located to the north and west of Norris, about a mile to a mile and a half away. However, if Cho used a vehicle to get to the post office, he most likely would have parked on Old Turner St., which you can see is right behind Norris. While this parking lot is reserved for faculty, I am sure getting a parking ticket was not on his mind. Since I have not heard anything about him owning a car [He may have. -- ed.], I will assume he walked/biked to the post office and to Norris. There is one minor entrance to Norris that I did not tell you about, and that is the entrance that is located directly below and to the left of the 132 on the map. Looking at the map, this would seem to be the easiest way to enter the building if you are coming to Norris from the west/northwest. However, the map does not show that there is extensive renovation going on to Burruss Hall, which is directly next to Norris. The entrance next to the 132, and the rest of the walkway between the two buildings, is usually blocked by construction workers, pickup trucks, and construction materials in the morning hours. While it is possible to enter Norris at this entrance, it is just easier to keep walking and enter through the tunnel. I also think that you should know that the first floor of Norris is more like a basement then a 1st floor of a building. Since Norris is built on a hill, there are not many windows or classrooms down there. The one big classroom that is on the first floor is being renovated this semester, and therefore was empty. This is me speculating, but I assume he didn’t kill anyone of the first floor because no one was down there. The second and third floors are where most of the classrooms are. Again I am going to speculate, but seeing how it now seems that this was not some sort of a hunt for a lost lover, I think Cho chose Norris for a reason. It is one of the only campus buildings that I can think of that has less than 4 exits, and most of the classrooms are not on the first floor. These two facts make it a hard place to get out of in a hurry, especially if you chain shut the doors.
I’m not so sure it was that random. The note found near Cho’s body apparently mentioned the engineering department specifically, which I believe is located in Norris Hall.
Geoff sends a second e-mail:
As I said before, the main Blacksburg post office is to the northwest of campus. However, there is a small post office to the east of campus and several mini-post offices inside of several dorms that are closer than the post office to the northwest. I don’t think he used these post offices though because if he went east, he would be walking right into most of the on-coming police officers. Both the Tech and Blacksburg Police Departments are located to the east of West AJ, where the first murders took place, and Harper, Cho’s dorm.
Patterico sent me Mapquest images of the two post offices last night. Here’s the one to the east which he probably didn’t use. And here’s the one to the northwest, which Geoff describes and which Cho probably did use. Norris Hall is the “start” point in both:
Update: Damn, I really should have jumped on that “Old Boy” tip when RLW sent it to me: Sky News now quotes detectives as saying Cho wathched the movie “repeatedly” in the last few days before the massacre. Presumably a roommate told them that, otherwise I don’t know how they’d know.
Update: This morning’s piece by David Maraniss in the Post is so detailed I felt obliged to flag it in the headline here. It’s the first lengthy treatment I’ve read of what happened in Norris Hall, moment by moment. It begins with another clue about when Cho shot the videos, too: according to Maraniss, Cho’s roommate went back to sleep after encountering him in the bathroom that morning at 5 a.m. So he would have been there during any filming that was happening in the common room. Could he have slept through that? Why did Cho spare his roommates, anyway?
Here’s just a taste from the piece — the final moments of Liviu Librescu, whose classroom was the last Cho reached such that everyone inside already knew what was happening just outside the door:
The teacher and his dozen students had heard too much, though they had not seen anything yet. They had heard a girl’s piercing scream in the hallway. They had heard the pops and more pops. By the time the gunman reached the room, many of the students were on the window ledge. There was grass below, not concrete, and even some shrubs. The old professor was at the door, which would not lock, pushing against it, when the gunman pushed from the other side. Some of the students jumped, others prepared to jump until Librescu could hold the door no longer and the gunman forced his way inside.
Matt Webster, a 23-year-old engineering student from Smithfield, Va., was one of four students inside when the gunman appeared. “He was decked out like he was going to war,” Webster recalled. “Black vest, extra ammunition clips, everything.” Again, his look was blank, just a stare, no expression, as he started shooting. The first shot hit Librescu in the head, killing him. Webster ducked to the floor and tucked himself into a ball. He shut his eyes and listened as the gunman walked to the back of the classroom. Two other students were huddled by the wall. He shot a girl, and she cried out. Now the shooter was three feet away, pointing his gun right at Webster.
“I felt something hit my head, but I was still conscious,” Webster recalled. The bullet had grazed his hairline, then ricocheted through his upper right arm. He played dead. “I lay there and let him think he had done his job. I wasn’t moving at all, hoping he wouldn’t come back.” The gunman left the room as suddenly as he had come in.
Update: Michael Welner, a forensic psychiatrist who consults for ABC (and who claimed yesterday that Cho was schizophrenic), calls NBC’s decision to air the videos “a social catastrophe.”
Update: According to U.S. News & World Report, Cho’s name would have been added to the NICS firearms background check database if the judge had ordered him committed when he was sent to a mental hospital in 2005. The fact that he ordered outpatient treatment instead kept Cho out of the system and made the later handgun purchases legal.
Update: Reader Pablo passes along this link with details about the spent shell found outside the Cho family home. According to McClatchy, it was an unspent round designed for a rifle and was found in a parking lot near the house. (See the 11:45 a.m. Tuesday item.) So it’s probably not connected to this.
Update: NBC has posted a few pages of Cho’s (redacted) manifesto online and, as promised, credit must be given to NIN: he does indeed mention 9/11 on page 2, although he casts himself as a victim, not as a jihadi perpetrator.
Update: Mary K asks a good question in the comments:
[H]asn’t the roommate said Cho had started getting up really early every morning? If he was up at five, it seems to me he could have easily spent an hour or two filming in the common area of a suite without his sleeping roomies knowing.
If he did shoot the film on Monday morning, I bet that’s when he did it. Remember, though: NBC said the video clips were split into 27 separate Quicktime files and that the written document referred to each separate file at various points. That’s a lot of coordination and probably not something that could have been done between 7:15 and 8 a.m. (after the first shooting and before Cho’s roommate looked in on him) or 8 a.m. and 9:01 (after Cho’s roommate looked in on him but before he sent the package out). It seems strange to me that he’d be willing to film between 5 and 7, though, knowing that his roommates were in their bedrooms and liable to overhear him — and potentially intervene and stop him — before he could go out and start shooting. Plus, he’d already met one of them in the bathroom at 5 a.m. so he knew at least one of them was awake.
Update: Re: the manifesto, a reader e-mails to note that the backdrop in some of the photos (page 21) looks like striped wallpaper, not the painted bricks seen in most of the photos and video. Wallpaper was unusual for dorm rooms when I was in college, so I’m thinking maybe those photos were taken at his parents’ house.
Update: Via Slublog, the Chronicle of Higher Education has surprisingly lengthy (and touching) profiles of each of the victims.
Update: Yet another e-mail from Geoff at VTech answering my question about Cho’s supposed vendetta against the engineering department:
[W]hile Norris is an engineering building, I would say that at least 30-40% of the classes that take place in Norris are not engineering classes. For example, I am a business major and have taken several accounting and finance classes in Norris, and two of the classes that were hit hard by this murderer were a French and a German class. There are other buildings on campus where the classes that take place in them are closer to 100% engineering. That being said, and I should have told you this earlier, the Dean of the Engineering College office is located on the third floor of Norris, along with the offices of other high ranking engineering officials (link). This raises another question though, why did he not go up to the third floor and shoot these engineering officials if he wrote something about the engineering department in a note?
He might not have known that the engineering department’s offices were on the third floor, and had simply assumed they were on the second (or assumed that the engineering professors were teaching class on the second floor at the time).
Update: I’m skeptical towards this theory that Cho was aping “The Punisher” comic books in some of his photos, but he was after all a nerd and I got burned last night by not running the “Old Boy” thing when we first got the tip.
Update: Obviously, no one will ever know at precisely what point Cho went from weird to psychotic. But for what it’s worth, his uncle says he was conspicuously “quiet” even as a kid:
Cho “didn’t talk much when he was young. He was very quiet, but he didn’t display any peculiarities to suggest he may have problems,” said the uncle, who requested to be identified only by his last name, Kim. “We were concerned about him being too quiet and encouraged him to talk more.”…
Cho’s maternal grandfather also told local newspapers that relatives were concerned about Cho not talking much as a child.
Cho “troubled his parents a lot when he was young because he couldn’t speak well, but was well-behaved,” the grandfather, who was identified by only his last name Kim, told the Dong-a Ilbo daily.
In a separate interview with the Hankyoreh newspaper, Kim, 81, said the relatives were worried that Cho might even be mute.
Update: Another non-surprise. Expect the media to seize on the boldfaced part any minute now:
Long before he snapped, 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 schoolboy in the Washington suburbs, former classmates say…
Once, in English class, the teacher had the students read aloud, and when it was Cho’s turn, he just looked down in silence, Davids recalled. 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.
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It should come as no surprise that the ramblings of a lunatic sound like the ramblings of liberals.
I doubt this kid had a spare neuron to spend on thoughts about Bush.
unamused on April 19, 2007 at 12:30 PM
Well, we don’t know whether the FBI is overlooking this or not. I would hope they wouldn’t.
Yes, the link is from http://www.debbieschlussel.com in her post “Israeli Holocaust Survivor, Hero of VTU Massacre: Gave Life to Save Students; Palestinian Student Related to Terrorist Compares Massacre to “Occupied Territories” (but Grew Up in Saudi).”
And her sources are Wolf Blitzer and the Baltimore Sun. She says:
She has links that won’t come through on the block quote. But you can go to her site to link and judge for yourself.
januarius on April 19, 2007 at 12:34 PM
How bout it NBC?
Speakup on April 19, 2007 at 12:41 PM
A couple of open questions:
1. Why did he start a fire in “a dorm”? His dorm? His room? Was he trying to make a bomb?
2. Did a guy with the same voice do the bomb scare and the martyr video?
3. What is the street address on the package?
4. He’s in a car/SUV in one of his videos. Did Psy-Cho have a car?
5. Why did NBC only show a few pages? What’s on the other pages?
6. Did Psy-Cho carry 88 bullets with him?
7. Did he buy the 1st gun on his 21st birthday?
faraway on April 19, 2007 at 12:43 PM
This is all 100% true, but the problem is that this is ALWAYS the reaction students have, and that reaction is getting students killed in large numbers. And there are gonna be people who argue that ‘its rare’. Yeah, well it is rare, but it happened at my school. We also do regular fire drills, and many do tornado drills. Kids did fallout drills during the cold war. School shootings are much like an act of terrorism, the numbers killed are relatively small, but the psychological impact is what is the largest.
Having allowing students to let their instincts hide under desks is NO LONGER ACCEPTABLE, too many children have been killed this way. Yes, it is instinct, thats what the kids at my school did, thats what the Columbine students did, and that’s where most were killed.
Thank God the person at my school wasn’t a Harris, Klebold or Cho, only one person was injured, but I could be telling you about a lost sibling too. Students are doing this, that instinct to curl up in a ball under a desk or table MUST BE BROKEN, NOW. I don’t care how much training it takes, students have to be taught to stay on their feet, and to either run like hell, escape the building, build barracdes, improvise weapons and fight back, or allow conceal-carry.
Bad Candy on April 19, 2007 at 12:51 PM
In fact in his manifest (part of which is on MSNBC) he clearly refernces “Being F**K by Bush when like he was on a hunting safari.
William Amos on April 19, 2007 at 12:57 PM
OK, question update.
4. Did he have a car? Well he got that speeding ticket on April 7th. His car? Same car as the video? Where was he when he got the ticket?
7. Did he get the 1st gun on his 21st birthday? Looks like he was 23 - so scratch this one.
faraway on April 19, 2007 at 1:05 PM
I admire and like HA for many reasons, one important one being their accountability for setting records straight. It’s rare in the media world and, thus, the more admirable.
How did this kid make it through high-school by not speaking? It w/b interesting to hear from his classmates/teachers of that time.
NBC feels special to be chosen as a package-destination, and is more concerned with ratings; the backlash is well-deserved.
Entelechy on April 19, 2007 at 1:15 PM
Oh great here comes the “We made fun of the oreintal and that is why he became a mass murderer” story
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070419/ap_on_re_us/virginia_tech_shooting;_ylt=Arorbn5PWLc1fgrC5z7zZpEDW7oF
Va. Tech shooter was laughed at By MATT APUZZO, Associated Press Writer
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 schoolboy in the Washington suburbs, former classmates say.
Once, in English class, the teacher had the students read aloud, and when it was Cho’s turn, he just looked down in silence, Davids recalled. 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.
Stephanie Roberts, 22, a fellow member of Cho’s graduating class at Westfield High, said she never witnessed anyone picking on Cho in high school.
But she said friends of hers who went to middle school with Cho told her they recalled him getting picked on there.
“There were just some people who were really mean to him and they would push him down and laugh at him,” Roberts said Wednesday. “He didn’t speak English really well and they would really make fun of him.”
She said she was sure Cho probably was picked on in middle school, but so was everyone else. And it didn’t seem as if English was the problem for him, she said. If he didn’t speak English well, there were several other Korean students he could have reached out to for friendship, but he didn’t, she said.
William Amos on April 19, 2007 at 1:19 PM
New question #7. Why did he leave a drill/screwdriver on his desk? Is there a secret compartment somewhere in the dorm? Or in his car?
faraway on April 19, 2007 at 1:21 PM
Hate those damn links
And Im not saying that stuff like that isnt hurtful but I and many others had far more hurtful things happen to us. I grew up in a very tough neighborhood and was beaten many times growing up just for being shy and quiet.
I have never shot anyone and have never owned a gun in my life. Nor do I hate anyone for the crap I went through as a Kid.
William Amos on April 19, 2007 at 1:22 PM
I think there was a link somewhere where it said that some professor from the engineering department was in the military and came downstairs and confronted Cho and was killed for it. So there was SOME resistance.
Vanceone on April 19, 2007 at 1:26 PM
What a strange coincidence… I got Oldboy from Netflix last week and didn’t have time to watch it until last night. I wasn’t really in the mood for a violent movie after this week’s events, and the irony of watching something that was both violent and from S. Korea wasn’t lost on me. But I had it at home, so I went with it. Before and after the movie I watched footage from the killer’s video on Fox News.
So, seeing the HotAir headline this morning that Cho watched Oldboy repeatedly, my eyes couldn’t have been wider. While I agree with asc85 that no movie, including this one, would make someone go on a killing spree, I can’t say it has no resemblance to the VT massacre. Two characters in the movie go to extremes for vengeance against each other (similar to Park’s Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance — I haven’t seen Lady Vengeance). It starts with a man being mysteriously abducted and imprisoned in what looks like a hotel room for 15 years with no explanation. When he is released, he wants revenge and hunts for his tormentor with a feral bloodlust. Without dropping spoilers, it turns out that the man he is pursuing is exacting revenge on him. The 15 years of imprisonment — during which his wife’s murder is blamed on him and he loses contact with everyone he knows, including his daughter — are only the beginning of the carefully-planned destruction of his life.
The only reason I bother describing all this is that I wouldn’t be surprised if Cho found inspiration in both of these vindictive characters. He employed the savage violence of the protagonist, but also the careful planning of the antagonist, which, by the end of the movie, proves to be much more destructive.
Finally, it would be ridiculous to connect too many dots between the real-life killings and the movie, but I did find one thing ironic. The antagonist’s revenge is for something he blames on the protagonist unjustly — something the protagonist did innocently years earlier and which he doesn’t even remember.
insomni on April 19, 2007 at 1:31 PM
More Questions.
8. Why did he kill the 1st 2?
He clearly had been planning the mass murder for a couple of months. Why did he kill the 1st 2 just prior to his main objective?
9. Is it a coincidence that Jamal al Barghouti (from the West Bank) video taped the shootings?
faraway on April 19, 2007 at 1:40 PM
In the U.S.A. one is free to be mentally ill. The government can’t easily intervene, lest we be the Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Saddam, Kim Jong Il, et all similar regimes. The failings are more: family, teachers, judges, counselors…
Psychologically it is nearly impossible that he would have filmed with his roommates sleeping. Simply too risky. More likely to have happened at home, or elsewhere, or during the weekend, when roommates were gone, and he would have known for sure they wouldn’t return for a time…
Also, he seems to be bitter about others’ possessions. It appears that he would have wanted the Mercedeses, the best-looking girls (from own circle it is also known that Asian men like white women), the funds, the cozy lives…that he couldn’t have. Thus, he might have chosen to be a martyr for the downtrodden.
Having failed in engineering/sciences, not having his desires fulfilled, not having a support system at home, in his culture, nowhere really, and having been allowed to live in his mentally ill world, pretty unchecked, might have compounded the situation.
All psychology/psychiatry schools will have the case of all cases, since it’s rare to get into such a mind. He provided much for them to study. Usually such people feel guilt and kill themselves, but not others. This one went all outward first.
To be sure, none of his actions are to be excused. Kids are being laughed at for many reasons.
Today’s headlines are pathetic. He came to this country at the age of 15, in 1992. Under the age of 16-17, when learning a new language, not even an accent is retained. He has no accent on the tapes. Deep voice and somber way of ’saying his piece’, perturbed, yes, but no accent. There was no specific reason to be laughed at for language. The media is just not informed and takes it away, with zero research and knowledge.
Entelechy on April 19, 2007 at 1:44 PM
My question was in reference to something else. Thanks though, good comment.
SouthernDem on April 19, 2007 at 1:47 PM
Cho had a major persecution complex. He seems to identify with people who are unjustly punished, particularly those who seek revenge. Even Ishmael could be considered persecuted, as he was put under the knife by his own father as part of God’s test of Abrabam.
BohicaTwentyTwo on April 19, 2007 at 1:51 PM
SouthernDem, please don’t take anything personal. I didn’t get to read the Schluessel reference yet. Was away all last week for business and this week not able to read every single comment. I do read all of AP’s and other updates and am perplexed by this case, as I’m sure are all.
Know that I respect you a lot and that I’m glad you’re here. Regards,
Entelechy on April 19, 2007 at 1:51 PM
Don’t dismiss the harassment, this IS a big part of what sets them off. That’s what set off the shooter in my school, and many others too. Schools do nothing to control harassment and bullying are a big part of the problem.
My school did and still does nothing to control abusive students, which is what set our shooter off, they were constantly made fun of and harassed, the school did nothing to control the harassment, and they went off. This is also a product of poor discipline. Abusive students are allowed to run the place. Its Lord of the Flies defined. Students better recognize that if they harass oddballs, they can and do go off, or schools better not allow excessive harassment. You don’t play with bombs, they can and do go off.
Bad Candy on April 19, 2007 at 1:51 PM
So can we stop posting this psycho’s picture already? I am getting sick of the look of pure evil greeting me on any web page I go to today. We all know what he looks like (what he wanted) and really there is no reason to keep posting them.
Kahuna on April 19, 2007 at 1:52 PM
Dirty little secrets,
dirty little lies
We got our dirty little fingers
in everybody’s pie
Love to cut you down to size,
we love dirty laundry
We can do the innuendo,
we can dance and sing
When it’s said and done,
we haven’t told you a thing
We all know that crap is king,
give us dirty laundry
Don Henley
Booo on April 19, 2007 at 2:08 PM
I’m fine with posting his picture. It gives a face for me to disdain and mock as a whiny disgusting little emo b*tch, because I know that’s the last thing he wanted. He wanted to be feared and seen as the face of darkness itself, I say take that away from him and laugh at his feeble attempt at relevance. Ace has the right idea photoshopping him.
Bad Candy on April 19, 2007 at 2:18 PM
As if I wasn’t sick of seeing this guy’s face, and annoyed with NBC for putting all his crap out there, now every headline tells us this psycho was teased and picked on. Boo hoo. I’m so sick of the media
brak on April 19, 2007 at 2:24 PM
They’ll definitely seize on that, and the fact that he was “picked on” and “bullied” and try to turn that into his “motive” for shooting, when what it sounds like - at least in my opinion - is that Cho was very much like the Columbine killers. The mediots widely reported and accepted the assumption that the Columbine killers were motivated by jocks who picked on them and others who ‘didn’t fit in’ but they were motivated more by power, and felt everyone else in the world was inferior to them. Slate had a good write-up about that in this 2004 piece that is well worth reading in light of what happened Monday. You’ll see, I think, a lot of parallels between the Columbine killers and Cho.
SisterToldjah on April 19, 2007 at 2:35 PM
No worries! :)
SouthernDem on April 19, 2007 at 2:49 PM
I floated the theory yesterday that he killed the first two (who had no connection to him) and waited awhile so that all the campus cops and a good number of local cops would be over at that dorm investigating and chasing wild geese. This left Cho free to begin his killing spree all the way across campus without fear that there might be a cop within range to stop him too quickly at Norris Hall. Like I said, just a theory. The guy certainly planned this thing down to the details, so it doesn’t seem too far-fetched.
aero on April 19, 2007 at 3:01 PM
Cho’s plays make me think he was sexually abused by an older, overweight male authority figure when he was young. The villains in both plays fit this description (one a step-father, the other a high-school teacher). Cho did seem to have a fixation on rape, particularly of the male-on-male variety.
aero on April 19, 2007 at 3:02 PM
LakeRuins: “No I am NOT preaching the “jump him when he reloaded” line.”
Maybe you should.
I’ve been told that many times the best way to deal with an ambush is to attack THROUGH it. It is usually what the enemy least expects.
And if you’re going to be slaughtered anyway, why not go down swinging? Flight 93.
Besides, with 3 or 4 guys charging him from different directions, the odds go up that one or two will be able to take him down, at least long enough for others to join in or for them escape.
On the issue of NBC runing the video and the pictures. The assclowns at NBC gave the little f*ck what he wanted: A chance to take his “grievances” national.
If this doesn’t spawn copycats, I’ll be very surprised.
georgej on April 19, 2007 at 3:04 PM
He’s getting the Citizen Kane treatment at WaPo. He’s a legend!
Perchant on April 19, 2007 at 3:12 PM
Again the racial angle was being played up while the “abused” angle is being downplayed.
Even in Cho’s manifesto he rails against two known pediphiles. Clearly while the teasing by his classmates created more aleination the real problem was something that happened long ago in this kids past.
William Amos on April 19, 2007 at 3:53 PM
ABC News blog is slamming Neil Boortz
http://thenewshole.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/04/19/157298.aspx
William Amos on April 19, 2007 at 4:36 PM
I predicted early this morning the liberal media will go for the racial angle(he is a victim and the actual victims are members of an oppressive race) because I noticed the South Korean media was doing it from the start. The liberal MSM has quickly followed suit. The sick implication is that somehow the victim’s society made Cho Seung-hui do it.
We all knew from the very start they will go for the gun control angle.
That story about the classmates all shouting “Go back to China” does not ring true. It just doesn’t. Fairfax County has a very “progressive” school system with many different races and ethnic groups. Teachers would not put up with that for a second. (In fact, I can’t picture any teacher anywhere in America putting up with it.)
I do recall, though, when in Daegu, Korea with the EPIK program (Korea’s version of JET) a Korean student who had a American soldier as a father and whose mother was Korean. The father had left Korea long before. Every time the kid would open his mouth, other Korean classmates would shout “APRI-KAN” (the Korean pronunciation for African). This was tolerated by the Korean teacher until I complained. Liberals need to get some perspective that Americans are not racists, but most other countries have notions of racial and ethnic superiority.
Cho Seung-hui is NOT a victim; he is the victimizer who brutally and cruelly murdered 32 students in cold blood.
Any MSM outlet that starts running with the Cho Seung-hui as a racial victim angle needs to bombarded with complaints.
januarius on April 19, 2007 at 4:52 PM
excellent coverage as always Hot Air. It’s good to look at all angles. I refuse to BLAME harassment for this. They tried to depict the poor students at columbine in this manner and Fox had on a step father of one that was killed the other night. He explained that he could not say details due to everything being under seal from the court but he DID say that if we knew the details, we’d see that the parents had a lot to do with this and also see it was about power. Too bad stuff is hidden from the public..we’ll never truly know.
I’m not one that says it is always the parents fault either…hell knows my brother could easily be a cho and he had a great upbringing. But I did find that step father of the columbine student interesting in his talk with fox since he saw the evidence that we did not.
Highrise on April 19, 2007 at 4:53 PM
Yet (per your many posts) you have no qualms blaming South Korean society for creating a mindset that made his act possible.
?? curious double standard isn’t it?
Bradky on April 19, 2007 at 5:01 PM
The Liberal spawn known as political correctness is to blame. Today, the chances of a commie-bastard university expelling a non-white for being a wack-job are between slim and none. And Slim just left town.
JackM on April 19, 2007 at 5:11 PM
I want to speculate on why Cho probably did not target the 3rd floor which has a couple of different groups there. First, let me explain how easy it is to enter the second floor. The second floor is basically the first floor and the first floor is a basement. There is an arch that divides Norris from the hall next to it. When you enter Norris from that side door located within the arch, you are basically on the second floor. There are six or seven stairs and at the top you pass through a set of swinging doors and you are right there on the second floor. If my memory serves me right, the only other way out of the second floor is the stairwell at the very end of the hall and the elevator next to that. Right after you walk up those stairs and open the swinging doors, there is a stairwell to the immediate left that takes you right to the 3rd floor which empties right at the Dean’s offices as well as Development, Distant Learning, and other groups and offices. As you exit the stairs on the 3rd floor, the Dean’s office is immediately to your right through a glass door and everyone in this area is scattered via multiple different offices and each of them have their own doors with locks. I do not think he could have killed nearly as many on the 3rd floor due to the layout of the offices on that floor.
Also, the classrooms on the second floor were recently renovated and the way they are laid out after that renovation means that the students were basically trapped by one another and I think the desks they sat at. Even if they wanted to rush him, they would not have been able to. Cho chose the 2nd floor because most of the people on the 3rd floor exit through that side door after going down those stairs which happen to be right next to the Dean’s office. (Keep in mind that this is the Dean of the College of Engineering, not all of VT). He had that side door chained up which resulted in people pooling up in that little stairwell which only contains 6 or 7 stairs; 4 or 5 people would have little room if they were all in there at once. If it weren’t for SWAT showing as up quickly as they had and he not being given the time he needed, he would not have needed to go to the 3rd floor.
zerodamage on April 19, 2007 at 5:13 PM
Bradky- I don’t think you read my post because your comment has nothing to do with it. (anyway, I should have written “victims’ society” instead of “victim’s society”)
I have no idea what your comment has to do with my post above. The analogy makes no sense.
januarius on April 19, 2007 at 5:27 PM
NBC should have passed the tape on the the FBI.
Promoting this self-aggrandizing mental sickness will only encourage more.
Erase his name from history.
Sick scum deserve oblivion.
profitsbeard on April 19, 2007 at 5:40 PM
For the better part of two days you have entertained us with your thoughts about South Korean society and its anti-Americanism and possible tie to this killer. You defended your position mightily.
But when the dreaded MSM suggests that American society is somehow responsible you profess shock and outrage.
Double standard. Hypocritical etc. Get it?
Bradky on April 19, 2007 at 5:51 PM
Say NOTHING ABOUT ALLAH [check]
Mimic Korean Revenge Films [check]
Be an outcast as long as anyone can remember [check]
NOT shout Allahuakbar by anyone’s testimory so far [check]
Compare yourself to Jesus [check]
Praise columbine killers [check]
In your manifesto ask “You wanna rape us John Mark Karrs?”
In your manifesto ask “You wanna rape us Debra Lavafes?”
etc. etc. etc.
Yeah, all Jihadi tell tale signs… (fart noise)
Look, I still want to know what Ax Ismael meant, and the haircut thing is odd, but this sort of wild speculation gives fuel to those that would attack us for grasping at straws which you and januarius continue to do.
Yes I understand that we’ve only seen snippets, and I have been on record as saying I don’t trust the authorities and the MSM to give us all the information honestly… But based on what we have seen, there’s very little to indicate true jihadi motivations. It seems like he sampled from a lot of pop culture, and he clearly was desperate for attention and this was his way of getting it.
januarius, you’r an ass. You don’t speculate from the facts, you pump tiny things up to support your wild speculation and push OBVIOUS LIES.
Hey genius, what happened to that post of Schlussel’s you were linking to yesterday, telling people to “eat crow”?
She posted a photo of a guy that looked NOTHING like Cho, insisted it was him simply because he was Korean and had a similar name and goes by Ismail… but he’s a teacher in Indonesia!!! The flickr photo was removed by the poster who was getting a lot of heat. The poster explained that it wasn’t Cho, but a friend of hers, and who he was.
It was there until at least midmorning. Now, gone from the main page!!!
I’ve been waiting for Schussel to correct the record and issue an apology. NOTHING. I’ve waiting for your to do the same. NOTHING! I even just went back to the permalink and she’s removed the content of the post, saying only:
http://www.debbieschlussel.com/archives/2007/04/is_this_ismail.html#comments
Is that a correction or apology? Sneakily removing it completely from the main page and for anyone who finds it via permalink, just tossing up a line like “eh, no big deal”.
Januarius, you need to shut up, seriously. You’re giving everyone a bad name here. As I said, how can we bash HuffPo commenters when they wish death on Tony Snow and Dick Cheney, etc. when you and a couple of your pals are making us look stupid over here?
RightWinged on April 19, 2007 at 6:05 PM
Info for Allah and everyone else on Harper Hall, where Cho lived. I believe he lived in a 3 bedroom suite (2 people per bedroom), but I can’t remember which one. At any rate, there is a map here that you can enlarge to get a better feel for the place. The “common area” in each suite is way to close to the bedrooms for him to have done any of his filming while people were home sleeping.
http://www.studentprograms.vt.edu/vtour/harper.php
RightWinged on April 19, 2007 at 6:09 PM
I don’t think we should discount the power of learning to tune out your roommates.
In college, I lived with a friend that decided to get an electric guitar. He felt that the best time for practicing was around 3-4am. This fit perfectly with his schedule because his first class was at noon. My first class was at 7am.
I’m not too confrontational, so, I just learned to sleep through his practicing - and yes, he was practicing with the guitar plugged into the amp although the amp was fairly low. His room was right next to mine and the three of us living in the basement all had to keep our doors open because there was only one window (in his room) so we needed to keep the air flowing.
My point simply being that it’s possible that he made the video without waking up his roommates. Especially if they had developed a knack for sleeping through other people’s late night tv watching, or hanging out, etc.
Also, that might explain why he is speaking in that odd voice. While I agree that it sounds like Napoleon Dynamite, I also think that it sounds like he’s trying to muffle his voice by speaking low, but still sound angry by speaking intensely.
However, I would not be at all surprised to find that the videos had been made somewhere else entirely. I just think it’s still possible they were made in his dorm common area.
JadeNYU on April 19, 2007 at 6:48 PM
I don’t trust NBC controlling the information spigot.
Why should I?
Stephen M on April 19, 2007 at 6:59 PM
This is all true, but my point wasn’t really about noise. It was about the odds that one of the other 5 people could at any point wake up and go to the bathroom, etc. and find him posing with guns and knives and foil his entire plan. That’s my only point - I think he filmed it all when no one was around, as someone said before, probably some during spring break?
RightWinged on April 19, 2007 at 7:03 PM
A thought experiment, if you will: People debate what should have been done before Cho went on a killing spree. The warning signs were there, some say. We ignored them and see what happened. Others say, sure, but the law ties our hands. Besides, we can’t lock people up preemptively, before they do any harm.
It seems to me that this argument echoes somewhat the debate over what to do about Iran. Are we presently ignoring the warning signs? Or if we don’t, we wring our hands saying, there’s nothing we can do.
By no means a perfect analogy, I know. But it’s interesting that the battlelines in the blogging world seem drawn up on the same sides in both debates. Again, just a thought experiment.
Cato on April 19, 2007 at 7:04 PM
How much longer do we have to look at this angry nutjob’s picture? It’s making me ill.
smellthecoffee on April 19, 2007 at 7:42 PM
Your over-the-top attitude and pious, dogmatical insistance that no one speculate on “Ismail Ax,” the West Bank student who grew up in Saudi Arabia (you don’t mention Debbie Schlussel’s accuracy there), Cho’s anti-Christian and debauchery rant, or anything else you deign should not be speculated upon is really becoming annoying on this blog. And you are attempting to dominate the discussion on every string. Count the number of your posts.
If you disagree with someone, be respectful and not rude like you have been lately. Also, it really is babyish (Ann Coulter would say “womanish”) when either conservatives or liberals whine for apologies by people. What is the point? Especially when they are doing such great work as Debbie Schlussel in educating Americans about the Religion of Peace.
What a naive and bizarre comparison. Being perhaps overvigilant in speculating about a possible jihadi connection right after the atrocity (especially the rash of sudden jihad syndrome lately) is somehow equivalent to wishing death upon Tony Snow and Dick Cheney? That is extreme.
Now can we please move on to another topic? You have really worn this one out.
januarius on April 19, 2007 at 7:58 PM
…Him!?!
Bad Candy on April 19, 2007 at 8:40 PM
For the love of Pete, she is not a saint. Ask Misha and the other conservative, and I mean conservative, sites she threatened to sue when they took her to task for the Jill Carroll “theories” she propagated.
And for that matter, she’s been hugely off base on this story as well, not to mention posting pictures of some innocent guy that she thought may have been the killer, praying for a scoop so she can go on t.v.
The truth of the matter is, you’ve made your point about your view of South Korean culture. We get it.
SouthernDem on April 19, 2007 at 9:27 PM
In an interview yesterday, his roommates said they believed he had been observant of their schedules, and knew when they’d all be gone from the suite. Was Cho still attending classes at all?
The WaPo article is fantastic. Cho seemed to go to some far-flung locations to get guns and ammo. I do wonder how he got around. The police seem to say he didn’t have a car on campus, but they have been familiar with the vehicle in his video from day 1. I don’t know what that means.
MayBee on April 19, 2007 at 9:27 PM
Regarding this SJS issue, or lack thereof. Can this finally, once and for all, be put to rest that he was not a jihadi? Please?
It has to be nipped in the bud, this rumor mongering. There are very few “good” (as in plausible) conspiracy theories and there are thousands of bad ones. This “was he a muslim convert SJS guy” conspiracy theory is one of the worst ones yet, for reasons pointed out by those more eloquent than I.
By all means, speculate on this, that or the other. When it becomes clear that certain speculations are flat out wrong or utterly irrelevant, then retract them and open a new line of inquiry.
Krydor on April 19, 2007 at 10:37 PM
Oh, already has. A whole school district just north of us was locked down today because of a threat. Even our district was on high alert and all the gates were locked. More cops around the campuses.
We’ll see more of this, I guarantee.
Bob's Kid on April 19, 2007 at 11:35 PM
I’ve repeatedly said that those points are all valid to keep in mind. But you’re repeating of them over and over and over is out of control. You’re desperate to prove this anti-American SK attititude and jihadi motivation for the killings, that you’re not just letting the evidence lead where it may, and waiting patiently for anything concrete.
I’ve made the distinction between irresponsible speculation and speculation time and time again, but you continue to highlight bits out of context, without looking at the entire picture that is developing.
As for the apologies.. Oh, excuse me, I guess I shouldn’t be pissed that Schlussel, and her lap dog (YOU) are running around wildly claiming that some teacher in Indonesia is Cho to further your agenda to prove that this guy was a Muslim. Look, Coulter is right about not needing to apologize most of the time. I didn’t care about what she said about Edwards (despite all the whiners around here). But it’s not as much the apology as the official and public retraction of her lie that she pushed.
AGAIN, the fricken guy didn’t even look like Cho, but she insisted it was, and you linked to the post and told people here to eat crow. Now you can’t find the post unless (like me) the specific post’s permalink is in your history. In fact, and all she did was remove all the lies, and just basically say “guess it wasn’t him”. She didn’t make an announcement that she’s sorry for misleading people. It wasn’t like she got fed bad information SHE WISHED for something obviously not true to be true to suit her agenda.
Look, having this guy turn out to be some type of jihadist suits my “agenda”, but I’m not going to make an ass out of myself using sketchy evidence fragments to wildly speculate. I think Islam in general is the problem, not radical Islam. I want Muslims and middle eastern looking people, especially younger men profiled at airports, etc. I want people to understand the threat that they forgot since 9/11. But I’m not going to look like an ass to do it, by repeating the same things over and over. Look, we know about Ax Ishmael, but we don’t know what it means. There are about 5 options right now, and even if it turns out to be some reference to Islam, as I stated he also talks about Columbine, he compares himself to Jesus, and about John Mark Karr and Debra Lafave raping. It’s hardly, Allahuakbar.
So let’s just let the evidence speak for itself. How about “silent” speculating. Saying things like “hmmm, XYZ is odd. Nothing concrete buy XYZ can relate to Islam like this. Let’s wait until the evidence comes in to see…” Then leave it where it is. You don’t need to repeat it over and over and link to bogus posts by your hero bloggers.
As for the comparison to HuffPo commenters, don’t spin what I was trying to say. I’m not saying the two issues are the same. I’m saying it’s tough to mock their commenters for stupid things they do, when you’re making us look bad with your behavior.
Yeah… me?
RightWinged on April 19, 2007 at 11:41 PM
So he was picked on. Fair enough, only why kill the college kids then, who by all accounts went out of their way to actually help Cho? Why not go into his old high school?
Esthier on April 20, 2007 at 10:27 AM
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