Who Was Cho Seung-Hui?

Bob Orr On The Virginia Tech Shooter

(CBS)  Cho Seung-Hui was a lone gunman, with few friends and no criminal record. Police say the 23-year-old South Korean-born student acted alone in a shooting spree that left 32 teachers and students dead, before turning the gun on himself.

As Bob Orr reports, Cho, a senior English major at Virginia Tech began his deadly day without warning at West Ambler Johnston Hall. There, inside a dorm room, he point-blank shot and killed a man and a woman.

Sources say Cho then quietly returned to his own dorm, Harper Hall, just a few hundred feet away. And it was there Cho left behind his only explanation for the horror that was about to play out.

Hours after the rampage, sources say investigators found a rambling but threatening letter. Officials decline to call it a suicide note, but in the letter Cho seemed to blame others for his perceived problems, charging that "You made me do this."

"This," as it turned out, would be wholesale slaughter.

Investigators say after stopping at his dorm, Cho then traveled a half mile across campus, chained closed the doors at Norris Hall, and began methodically working his way through four classrooms, shooting students and teachers at will.

Many have multiple gunshot wounds, a clear sign that Cho reloaded perhaps more than once before his rage ended in suicide.

Karan Grewal, who was a suite mate of Cho's, said he saw him just two hours before the first shooting occurred. "He came in, I saw him look normal as usual, no expression on his face, he didn't seem angry or you know sad or anything, just the normal look on his face, just, like the picture," he recalls.

Grewal said Cho barely spoke to his own roommates. "I was shocked. He didn't look like a guy who could really do that. He wasn't angry. He just appeared to be shy, not angry," Grewal explains.

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Click here for an interactive gallery of the victims.

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Another student, Aimee Fauser, who lives in Harper Hall, says she and her friends were just lucky not to be in the line of fire. "They're just shocked that it could have happened and that somebody so close did something because he could have come back here between the shootings. And seems like we missed, dodged a bullet there," she explains.

Cho, a loner in life, apparently wanted to be anonymous in death. Sources say he carried no identification on him during his killing spree. And the serial numbers on his two handguns had been erased.

But, investigators tell CBS News paperwork in Cho's backpack allowed them to trace one of his guns – a 9mm Glock to a recent purchase at a Roanoke gun store.

Police last night carried out a search of Cho's dorm room and removed letters, papers, and other personal items.

Authorities also searched Cho's home in northern Virginia. His neighbors, like his dorm mates, were stunned to learn that a young man in their midst was behind the Virginia Tech massacre.

"I would never have thought we would have something like that originating here in this town and on this street. This is really shocking. Absolutely," says neighbor Marshall Main.

There were some troubling signs with Cho: students in his writing classes say he often wrote violent scenes they describe as "twisted." He wrote two screenplays dealing with death and revenge – two things that seem to have played out Monday on the Virginia Tech campus.

Police still have no clear motive for the killings. Until the shootings, Cho's only known run-ins with the law were two speeding tickets he picked up in the past three weeks.

Authorities are hard pressed to explain how a man with no criminal past took such an immediate and violent turn.

[allio07]

as i watched the 48 hours i was watching to get information, not CBS's condescending tone. the featured guest suggested that the campus should have been shut down after the first two were shot. my question is, why would they shut down campus? virginia tech should not be recieving any criticism, they have already been through enough.

also, i am a fan of katie couric but i was very disappointed with her interview of george bush. bringing up gun control was completely out of line and unnecessary. clearly, it is an issue that needs to be brought up, but 32 people have JUST been killed, and that is what she focuses on?

[shemahan]

i have never done this before, but i just registered to comment back to that stupid slackmouth. OF COURSE THEY SHOULD HAVE CLOSED CAMPUS AND CANCELED CLASSES A GUNMAN WAS ON THE LOOSE!!! *** idiot, imma college student and I would sue the hell out my university if i had been shot!

[shemahan]

AND YES I BELIEVE GUN CONTROL IS QUITE RELEVANT AFTER A MASS SHOOTING LEAVES 32 PEOPLE DEAD...

[donn7114]

I knew that only idiot liberals read CBS news...I repeat shemahan, THEY DEFINITELY SHOULD HAVE CLOSED CAMPUS...THERE WAS A DOUBLE MURDERER ON THE RUN. Many a heads will roll in top positions at that school and police department. This is unacceptable. I'm a college student, and it would be extremely easy to shut down campus and lock all of the dorm building, it is ridiculous that this didn't happen. The same people who didn't think we should do anything after 9-11 would be the ones that thought we shouldn't have shut down campus.

[mp_nixon]

Why does VATech think not canceling classes for a few hours is worse then haveing a madman running amuck?

Look folks, this was not the college's fault. Whenever stuff like this happens, people want to be able to blame someone. The only person who can truly be blamed for it is dead and gone, so people look for someone who is alive to blame. Just look at how people blamed the government and the resue workers for the damage that Hurricane Katrina did.

Do you think any of the leaders at that college or the police wanted this to happen? It is very immature to blame them for this tragedy. If you want to blame someone for this, blame the pedophile stepfather that Cho Seung-Hui wrote about in his writings. He probably raped this kid when he was an 8-year-old Korean orphan, and turned the kid into a sociopath. I'm just guessing based on the stories I have read about other sociopaths. People create sociopaths - they are not born that way.

[tpeks40]

I wish just one of his fellow classmates was carrying a weapon, this tragedy might have stopped before 32 people lost their lives. Do we begin arming teachers and administrators?

[kailumego1]

Bullying, rejection, loss of status, etc., is something each and every one of us has experienced at some point in life, so what makes it so different now.

Could it be this generation has become so desensitized by the bombardment of gratuitous violence in the movies, video games, or the media.

Or is this the result of an even "bigger picture", social apathy, cultural indifference, and pluralistic intolerance.

After all when the police confiscated his journals there told the tale of morbid sadism. He wrote explicitly of his hatred for blacks, rich kids and debauchery.

But, where did this misanthropic, elitist, and self-righteous behavior originated???

When psychologist and police authorities began the difficult task of unraveling his morbid psychosis they discovered he had been suffering from major depression. But, is that reason enough behind this mass slaughter??

I don't have the actual statistics on the top of my head, but I think 20%+ Americans suffer from depression. Now does this justify reasoning behind this gruesome mass slaughter, no!!!

[enaudnalla]

You think He listened to Rap Music?
A town hall meeting on Asian males would be the media way to go considering their past on perpetuating crimes and behaviour and disparity on certain cultures.

[newsreader2]

LOOOOSEEERRRR.

[kathysho]

I do not doubt that this comment will anger many, but I see a huge hole in all the news coverage I've seen. Here goes.

I extend my heartfelt sympathy to students, families and faculty at Virginia Tech. I mourn anytime we lose a fine young mind. In this case we lost 32 of them.

I struggle with how the shooter's mental illness was able to get this far. I hope that the Virginia Tech tragedy can somehow better teach us how those closest to the mentally ill can affect change when the ill won't or cannot accept it. And even to recognize it.

I do hope Cho Seung Hui's family has an extended support group. I want to know what help is available to them and whether they're using it. I surmise, from everything I have read -- and there's not been much, that they are a very fine family with values in all the right places.

[ralan40]

Let me get this straight, They closed the campus at the begining of the year when a prisoner was on the loose, nearby. Yet when 2 people were SHOT and KILLED in a dorm, they didn't cancel classes. Why not? If this double shooting happened within a half mile of an Elementary or High School, it is locked down. How can anyone say that not increasing security after a DOUBLE MURDER was a proper step? I know the college officials said they didn't have enough information to make a decision...but How much time was needed to determine 2 people were shot and killed?

[knyghtwolf]

I went through the UT system in texass with classes filled with guys like this. Everyone today is a potiential Cho Seung-Hui, male or female. All that needs to be applied is the right trigger, situation, or problem(s) left unaddressed or considered unfinished business. The fault with this one is our societal system of inducing paranoia through endless streams of medications, organic brain disorders left to develop, racism, political & religious differences, the list is endless. Its NOT just a ONE FACTOR thing that triggers the onset of this type of behavior, itCho Seung-Hui s a combination of many. Now people want to blame gun control, security issues, blah blah blah blah blah. Put the blame where it belongs; If Cho Seung-Hui smart enough to be in college, and his behavior was noticed by many to fit the issues of his behaviors enough that a professor referred him to seek help and that he was on meds for depression, whose fault is it if Cho Seung-Hui was accountable enough to be in college? This could have been ANYONE Of us, including those posting in these forums, it was only a matter of time for it to hit a campus, what will be next?

[knyghtwolf]

I do admire mr bush for his speech he made the day before concerning this terrible tragedy, and I certainly hope he can follow his own advice concerning how to deal with all the issues now facing the students, faculty, friends & family of Virgina Tech. It saddens me that so many are now playing the blame game and that news reporters are trying to out do each other in who can get the most pain, grief, and misery out of each interview, but thats the sensationalism of news today, gotta keep those ratings going for the sponsors to keep the cash flowing. For those living today, those who are concerned about the cold reality of life and its many pains on the race to illusionary dominion, imagine for just a second if you will, how each and every single one of those victims felt in the last 60 seconds of their life; put yourself there, just do a visual, and imagine how you would have personally handled those last few precious seconds, YOUR life, your own personal record of what was most important right at that moment. Scary thing to go that path for even just a second.

[speedsamurai]

1) Gun Control is a dead issue. There are already too many out there. It'll never happen but I think we would be safer if we all can legally carry guns. There will be no such thing as a soft target anymore. You take my life at the risk that I'll take yours. May the better man wins. With things the way they are now, just the crazy and the criminals win.

2) Why did he do it? Who cares! Losssserrr! Life is tough get over it! My family and I are war refugees,we've seen it all. Half my family is dead but I don't want to hurt anyone ever nor do I blame anyone. Boohoohoo, life's so tough! Lossserrr! Get over yourself.

3) My deepest sympathy to those who have lost a loved one in this tragedy.

4) If you think someone is mentally unstable, report it, there are good meds out there that can help if the person has access to them.

[cate45_1999]

I guess what I want to know is what his parents might have to say about their son. I have been looking through article after article and there is really nothing from his parents. Was he a good boy? Did they think he needed help in his thinking? What led him to think as he did? He obviously wanted to talk with someone but no one followed through, from what I have read. I know that what he did was beyond all logic but why didn't anyone see this brooding deep inside him ... I have to believe that there was good inside him.

[lee9861]

my condolesence to those people and families.
it was a terrible thing to happen.
but what was happening in this mans mind to cause such a mass distruction. And the campus as well !!! double shootings and not even a lock down or warning other students.
Students had to do there very best to keep safe where were the security I thought the US was on high alert knew to terroist attacks because it can happen anytime anywhere.
And Is this going to cause a mass discrimination against all asians now !!!!!

[lee9861]

Are all asian now in the firing line, before it was middle eastern people, now asians.
sure this person was wrong but I still feel there is more to this than the media is telling or the Govt.aren't letting the nation know.
What a stuff up again for the bush govt. What is america coming too. THIS IS GETTING TOO FAR NOW ITS LIKE GUN WAR FAIR !!!THEY MUST DO SOMETHING ABOUT GUNS ISNT 32 DEATHS ENOUGH EVIDENCE. HOW MANY MORE DO THE GOVT. NEED TO TOUGHEN GUN LAW.NEXT WILL HEAR A 12 YR OLD SHOOTING FROM THE STREETS. WHAT IS THIS WORLD COMING TOO !!!!!

[esaintil]

Ok, first off I have to say I feel really bad for the victims along with friends and families of the victims. I also feel really bad for the shooter's family cause everyone is going to blame them for this no matter what. I am confident that racism is not dead in the US and people are going to want to blame Asians, especially South Koreans for this tradegy. This happens everytime non-white American people do crimes against humanity. Notice there was no racial group to go after when the Columbine tragedy occured. As for the school getting blamed for the tragedy, I cannot say they should be blamed at all for this. But with that said, they should be found guilty on all counts of bad/stupid judgement. TWO PEOPLE KILLED ON CAMPUS IN COLD BLOOD, AND THE SHOOTER IS NOT YET TO BE FOUND AND YOU SAY NOT A WORD!!! Im not saying for sure this would have saved lives because I don't own a crystal ball, but common sense should have dictated a campus alert should have gone out when there are two double-homicides with the shooter still on the loose. Whether or not he went on to kill others at all should not have been an issue. Shooter still on the loose with a high potential of still being on campus = YOU WARN PEOPLE!! This did not happen 3-5 miles off campus. No one is to blame for this tragedy, including the shooter's own parents but there should have been a better response then just investigating a crime scene alone.

[esaintil]

sorry last comment was a replication error:(

[michellem99-2009]

No body made him do this awful killings. He did. I have met people from Asia.Law abiding folks just would not do this.
It is not right that he killed others as he must have beed so bitter in inside.I don't feel sorry for him.
I grew up poor and am poor and blind. I am not bitter as life is too short to waste on what can't be changed. He has blood on his dead hands.We come together as a nation to honour the loss at VT and their loved ones. May they rest in peace. My heart felt prayers are with them.

[retmilspouse]

There is no excuse for what this monster did. But if anything can come from this please: parents, adults, friends, teachers, preachers, neighbors etc etc etc etc.....
Teach children not to make fun of people. I see it happening everyday especially when children are in groups, even with other adults, making fun of people with derogatory remarks, laughing and other negative actions. If you do not like the way someone looks, talks, acts or dresses
DON'T LOOK AT THEM, GO AWAY AND LEAVE THEM ALONE! Why are there bullies in the world, they are as much at fault as this sick individual is for what happened. People who bully are now standing to the side and commenting on how horrendous this action was.

[citizen2007]

Is he a victim of our society? He is a monster our society created. I pray for the victims of VA Tech.