BREAKING NEWS
By Alex Johnson MSNBC
Updated: 6 minutes ago
Cho Seung-Hui sent NBC News a long and rambling communication and video about his grievances, the network said Wednesday. Network officials turned the material over to the FBI and said they would not immediately disclose its contents pending the agency’s review.
The communication is the last known red flag raised by Cho, 23, a senior English major at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, who killed 32 people in two separate attacks Monday before taking his own life.
But as early as 2005, police and school administrators were wrestling with what to do with the young man, who was accused of stalking two female students and was sent to a mental health facility after police obtained a temporary detention order.
The two women complained to campus police that Cho was contacting them with “annoying” telephone calls and e-mail messages in November and December 2005, campus Police Chief Wendell Flinchum said.
Cho was referred to the university’s disciplinary system, but Flinchum said the woman declined to press charges, and the case apparently never reached a hearing.
Detention order issued
However, after the second incident, the department received a call from an acquaintance of Cho’s, who was concerned that he might be suicidal, Flinchum said. Police obtained a temporary detention order from a local magistrate, and in December of that year, Cho was voluntarily but briefly admitted to Carilion St. Albans Behavioral Health Center in Radford, NBC News’ Jim Popkin reported.
To issue a detention order under Virginia law, a magistrate must find both that the subject is “mentally ill and in need of hospitalization or treatment” and that the subject is “an imminent danger to himself or others, or is so seriously mentally ill as to be substantially unable to care for himself.”
According to a doctor’s report accompanying the order, which was first reported by the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Cho was “depressed,” but “his insight and judgment are normal.” The doctor, a clinical psychologist who was not identified, noted that Cho “denies suicidal ideations.”
Under the law, the magistrate could have issued a stronger detention order mandating inpatient treatment, but there was no indication Wednesday that such an order was ever entered. A spokesman for Carilion St. Albans told NBC News that he could not discuss Cho’s case because of patient confidentiality and privacy laws, but he said the hospital was cooperating with the investigation.
Otherwise, Flinchum said, there were no further police incidents involving Cho until the deadly shootings Monday, first in a young woman’s dormitory room and then at a classroom building across campus. Neither of the alleged stalking victims was among the victims Monday.
In addition to the 33 people confirmed dead, including the gunman, nine people remained in hospitals in stable condition, hospital authorities said.
Health records sought
Campus police applied Wednesday for search warrants for all of Cho’s medical records from Schiffert Health Center on campus and New River Community Services in Blacksburg.
”It is reasonable to believe that the medical records may provide evidence of motive, intent and designs,” investigators wrote in the documents, according to The Associated Press.
Police searched Cho’s dorm room Tuesday and recovered, among other items, a chain and a combination lock, according to documents filed Wednesday. The front doors of Norris Hall, the classroom building, had been chained shut from the inside during the shooting rampage.
Other items that were seized included a folding knife; two computers, a hard disk and other computer disks; documents, books, notebooks and other writings; a digital camera; compact disks; and two Dremel tools, which are rotating tools used for cutting, sanding and other applications.
In an affidavit seeking the search warrant, police found a “bomb threat” note — directed at engineering school buildings — near the victims in the classroom building. In the past three weeks, Virginia Tech had received two other bomb threats; investigators said they had not connected those to Cho.
Family sought better life in U.S.
Cho arrived in the United States as an 8-year-old boy from South Korea in 1992 and was raised in an off-white, two-story townhouse in Centreville, Va., a suburb of Washington, where his parents worked at a dry cleaners. He graduated from Westfield High School in Chantilly in 2003.
Cho’s family moved to the United States in search of a better life, said the family’s landlady in South Korea. The family was poor and lived in a cheap basement apartment on the outskirts of Seoul, the woman told South Korean television Wednesday.
Cho had an older sister, Sun-Kyung, who graduated from Princeton University with an economics degree in 2004, Princeton officials confirmed.
Cho had an older sister, Sun-Kyung, who graduated from Princeton University with an economics degree in 2004, Princeton officials confirmed.
From Princeton Weekly Bulletin, November 24, 2003:
This fall, five students told the Weekly Bulletin about their international internships: Sun-Kyung Cho, a senior; Avril David, a junior; Iva Kleinova, a sophomore; Marilyn Waite, a sophomore; and James Walter, a senior.
Sun-Kyung Cho -- Bangkok, Thailand
Her interest sparked by a previous summer working at the State Department's International Labor Office in Washington, D.C., Sun-Kyung Cho, an economics major from Centreville, Va., wanted to observe actual labor conditions in a developing country. After consulting with Uribe, she secured an internship through the State Department with the Economics Section of the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok. The internship was unpaid, but IIP provided enough funding for most of Cho's traveling and living expenses.
"They were the most amazing three months of my life," said Cho. She worked with a labor officer on a wide range of issues, which included visits to factories. The experience was so profound that after returning to campus, she changed the focus of her senior thesis to a more labor-related topic.
"We went to Mae Sot, a town on the Thai-Burmese border, to observe working and living conditions of Burmese migrant workers," said Cho. "At two of the sites, conditions were in an unspeakable state with no running water and crammed rooms housing up to 30 people. Most factories in the area make ceramic and garment products and specifically hire young Burmese girls, whose small hands are deemed best suited for this type of manufacturing work. It was humbling to see and changed my perspectives in many ways."
With housing provided by the embassy, Cho said she missed the possibility of benefiting culturally from living with a Thai family, but she made the most of her free time to explore Bangkok.
"I found that the best way to get to know the city was taking the skytrain to random locations and walking around for a couple of hours," she said. "I think it is always easy for Americans to maintain an American way of life abroad. The best thing is to avoid these traps and go out there and immerse yourself in a new culture."