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State Police searching Virginia Tech duck pond By Dawn Jefferies / 10 On Your Side Jun 25, 2007 It was here, at the Virginia Tech duck pond witnesses reported seeing Seung Hui Cho the morning of April 16th. Today, the duck pond is being drained. Virginia state police say they're leaving no stone unturned. Back in April, 10 on your side was there when teams searched the area, only saying it was a routine part of the investigation. Teams will come out and search this area again but they have to wait until the water drains. Last week, the Washington...

During the immediate aftermath of the massacre at Virginia Tech one week ago, the University President, Charles Steger, quickly mobilized a campaign to save his career. Within hours, shock and mourning were quickly replaced with a full-scale public relations stint. Unfortunately, President Steger was not the only one aiming to capitalize from mass murder: bloggers and commentators across the nation began advocating for a change in gun control policy - either fewer restrictions or tighter control. Wounds cannot be healed if they are not felt. The administrators at Virginia Tech played down the destruction for their personal gain and at...

BLACKSBURG, Va., April 18 — Cho Seung-Hui rarely spoke to his own dormitory roommate. His teachers were so disturbed by some of his writing that they referred him to counseling. And when Mr. Cho finally and horrifyingly came to the world’s attention on Monday, he did so after writing a note that bitterly lashed out at his fellow students for what he deemed their moral decay. Mr. Cho’s eruption of violence, in which 32 victims and himself were killed on the Virginia Tech campus here in a rampage of gunfire, was never directly signaled by his actions or words, several...

Gun advocates in the United States say last week's massacre at Virginia Tech university may not have happened if students were allowed to carry concealed guns on campus. "This is a huge nail in the coffin of gun control," said Philip Van Cleave, president of the gun rights group Virginia Citizens Defence League. "They had gun control on campus and it got all those people killed, because nobody could defend themselves," he told AFP. "You want people to be able to defend themselves - always," he said. Thirty-two people were killed when student Cho Seung-Hui went on the rampage in...

Tech gunman shot victims over 100 times By KRISTEN GELINEAU, Associated Press Writer 12 minutes ago Virginia Tech gunman Seung-Hui Cho fired enough shots to wound his 32 victims more than 100 times before killing himself with a bullet to his head, a medical examiner said Sunday. Dr. William Massello, the assistant medical examiner based in Roanoke, said pathologists have sent blood samples for toxicology testing to determine if Cho was on drugs at the time of his rampage. It could take as long as two weeks to get the results of those tests, he said. Cho was not especially...

On the March 16th morning broadcast of Fox News Live, within hours of the conclusion of the massacre, Fox contributor and former D.C. Homicide Detective Rod Wheeler was asked about the possibility that an M-16 may have been this shooter's weapon of choice. It is unclear -and may never be known- whether a witness reported an M-16, whether a witness assumed that an M-16 was involved due to the volume of fire, or exactly where Fox obtained this information. If you'll remember the Beltway sniper incident which turned out to be the work of John Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo,...

Just before 5am on Monday, April 16, Cho Seung-hui got out of bed and walked to his computer. Perhaps he fiddled with his rambling 1,800-word self-portrait of a killer as the insults and grievances that he had been nursing for years coursed through his head. High on his list were his classmates from Westfield high school, who jeered at him to “go back to China” without bothering to check his nationality. Two of them — who happened to attend Virginia Tech — were going to pay later that day. Then there were the college girls who reported him to the...

The search for the propellant of the killer-madness in Cho Seung-Hui tells us more about disorders in American thought than about those of the murderer. Recall first and foremost that the crime was quickly identified as the “bloodiest shooting attack in American history” done by a single person. We accepted this—but quickly rejected its corollary: namely, that if it was that—the most violent rampage in 231 years of history—then it had some claim to be called unique. In fact it differs in magnitude but not in kind from shootings in which 23 or 19 people were killed. If a man...

Troubled state of Virginia Tech killer was known in '05 By Shaila Dewan and Marc Santora Wednesday, April 18, 2007 BLACKSBURG, Virginia: Campus authorities were aware 17 months ago of the troubled mental state of the student who shot and killed 32 people at Virginia Tech on Monday, an imbalance graphically on display in vengeful videos and a manifesto he mailed to NBC News in the time between the two sets of shootings. "You have vandalized my heart, raped my soul and torched my conscience," the gunman, Cho Seung-Hui, said in one video mailed shortly before the shooting at a...

BLACKSBURG, Va. - The family of Virginia Tech gunman Seung-Hui Cho told The Associated Press on Friday that they feel "hopeless, helpless and lost," and "never could have envisioned that he was capable of so much violence." "Our family is so very sorry for my brother's unspeakable actions. It is a terrible tragedy for all of us," the family said. The statement was issued by Cho's sister, Sun-Kyung Cho, on her behalf and that of her family. She works as a contractor for a State Department office that oversees billions of dollars in American aid for Iraq. "We pray for...

The Virginia Tech Killer's Final Victim: Cho Seung-Hui By John David Powell Apr 20, 2007 This will not be popular, but it must be said: Thirty-three students lost their lives this week in those horrible minutes on the Virginia Tech campus. Thirty-three sets of parents lost their children, and many siblings lost their brothers or sisters. The official count sets the number at 32. An addendum to the accounting tells us the killer took his own life, and brought the "number of dead" to 33. But, we all know by now, just as we knew within hours, that the person...

The Virginia Tech shooter may have been nearly mute as a child and bullied as a teenager for talking strangely and being so shy. But as new details emerged yesterday about Cho Seung-Hui's early days in South Korea and later as an immigrant living near Washington, some students scarred by his unthinkable cruelty said they couldn't care less. The airing by NBC of the videotaped rants he mailed at 9:05 a.m. Monday between his rampages at a dorm and a classroom building didn't help many who are trying to cope with the loss of colleagues and friends on this sprawling...

Families cancel NBC appearances over gunman video Thu Apr 19, 10:14 AM ET Some family members of the victims killed at Virginia Tech university canceled interviews with NBC on Thursday because the television network aired video and photographs of the killer it received in the mail. Police handling the investigation into the shooting also expressed disappointment at the airing of the images and rants by Cho Seung-Hui, who killed 32 people and then himself in the worst shooting rampage in modern U.S. history. "We had planned to speak to some family members of victims this morning but they canceled their...

After years of watching my beautiful daughter slowly commit suicide by drinking herself to death – frustrated over and over by Massachusetts laws that protect the “rights” of those with minor mental health problems to kill themselves – and prevent family members from ever being able to do anything effectively to stop them, it was with the greatest sadness and outrage that I watched the tragic events at Virginia Tech unfold.

Gun control has been treated with a mix of silence and discomfort in the presidential campaign, a response that may become insupportable once the nation finds its voice in the aftermath of the Virginia Tech mass murder. Democrats have been deliberately muted for months on an issue that, by their own reckoning, contributed to and perhaps sealed their defeat in the 2000 presidential election. That's when Al Gore's call for gun registration cost him votes in rural America and dulled the party's appetite for taking on the gun lobby. Top Republicans in the race are trying to close ranks with...

NBC News's decision to telecast portions of the video material it received Wednesday from Virginia Tech killer Cho Seung-Hui, material that was disseminated by other print and electronic news divisions, provoked reaction that moved the news division to release an explanatory statement Thursday. It did not quell negative reverberations, including the cancellation of appearances on NBC's "Today" show Thursday in protest of the decision made by NBC News. The network also imprinted the NBC News credit on everything released to other media from the package it was sent by Cho. In one of the on-air moments of recognition that NBC...

April 19, 2007, 1:08 a.m. On Hating Rich Kids . . . and MoreThe Virginia Tech shooter’s America problem. By Jerry Bowyer We know a lot more now than we did on Monday. And we know for sure that Cho Seung-Hui had a problem with America. Today, of course, we are being bombarded by the contents of a package sent by the killer to the folks at NBC: videos, photos, writings, and ramblings — all disturbing and in their own way telling. But I contend that the play’s the thing. Cho Seung-Hui wrote a viscerally anti-American play called “McBeef”...

Police investigating the Virginia Tech killings are looking at whether Cho Seung-Hui was copying parts of a violent film when he murdered 32 people. Officers believe he repeatedly watched Oldboy as part of his preparation for the killing spree. The film, which won the Grand Prix award at the 2004 Cannes film festival, has been described as "an ultra-violent movie of obsession and revenge". It contains stylised scenes of killings and an attempted suicide, and is filled with what one critic called "punishing emotional violence".

Police believe the Virginia gunman may have been copying scenes from a film when he carried out his killing spree. Scene from Oldboy and Seung-HuiDetectives say Cho Seung-Hui repeatedly watched the South Korean movie Oldboy in the days leading up to the massacre in which 32 people were killed. The film's themes of obsession and revenge also occur in Cho's own writings. In a chilling video sent by the student to the American TV network NBC he appears to re-enact scenes from the movie in a series of photographs. In one he holds a gun to his own head and...

Nearly two years earlier,( Nikki ) Giovanni had stood up to Cho Seung-Hui ... He wore sunglasses to class and pulled his maroon knit cap down low over his forehead. When she tried to get him to participate in class discussion, his answer was silence. "Sometimes, students try to intimidate you," ... "And I just assumed that he was trying to assert himself." But then female students began complaining about Cho. About five weeks into the semester, students told Giovanni that Cho was taking photographs of their legs and knees under the desks with his cell phone. She told him...