Virginia Tech Gunman: Recollections
Click On The Tabs Above To Learn More About The Man Responsible For The Virginia Tech Killings
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Play CBS Video Video Students Describe Shooter Harry Smith speaks with a former classmate and former roommate of shooter Cho Seung-Hui. Both describe Cho as being far different from what he portrayed on the video sent to NBC.
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Video Shooter Seen As Unstable Two years prior to the massacre at Virginia Tech, the shooter, Cho Seung-Hui, checked himself into a mental institution. Sharyn Alfonsi has the latest on the gunman.
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Video Gunman's Classmate Speaks Out Harry Smith speaks to Sara Stevens, who attended a writing class with Virginia Tech gunman Cho Seung-Hui during the past three years. Stevens recalls her classmate's "brutal and graphic" plays.
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Virginia Tech student Karan Grewal, 21, of Falls Church, Va., talks with reporters outside the Harris Hall dormitory on the campus of Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va., Wednesday, April 18, 2007. Grewal was a roommate to Cho Seung-Hui, the gunman blamed for the deadliest shooting in modern U.S. history. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
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Interactive Virginia Tech Tragedy Deadly shooting rampage on Virginia Tech campus leaves 33 dead.
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Interactive In Memoriam Profiles of the students and staff who lost their lives in the massacre at Virginia Tech
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Photo Essay Virginia Tech Mourns University campus devastated by worst shooting in U.S. history.
"I had no idea he was capable of this," roommate Karan Grewal said. "We were never told his teachers had concern about him committing suicide and all these dark feelings.
"We were never told that our suitemate was depressed or suicidal."
Professors and classmates were alarmed by his class writings — pages filled with twisted, violence-drenched writing.
"It was not bad poetry. It was intimidating," poet Nikki Giovanni, one of his professors, said in a broadcast interview.
"I know we're talking about a youngster, but troubled youngsters get drunk and jump off buildings," Giovanni said. "There was something mean about this boy. It was the meanness — I've taught troubled youngsters and crazy people — it was the meanness that bothered me. It was a really mean streak."
Giovanni said her students were so unnerved by Cho's behavior, including taking pictures of them with his cell phone, that some stopped coming to class and she had security check on her room. She eventually had him taken out of her class, after threatening to quit if he wasn't removed.
Lucinda Roy, a co-director of creative writing at Virginia Tech, said she tutored Cho after that. She said she tried to get him into counseling in late 2005 but he always refused.
"He was so distant and so lonely," Lucinda Roy, a co-director of creative writing at Virginia Tech said in a broadcast interview "It was almost like talking to a hole, as though he wasn't there most of the time. He wore sunglasses and his hat very low so it was hard to see his face."
"He was very quiet, always by himself," said Abdul Shash, a neighbor of Cho's family in Centreville, Va., Shash said Cho spent a lot of his free
time playing basketball, and wouldn't respond if someone greeted
him. He described the family as quiet.
© MMVII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Best-selling author Mitch Albom on his first nonfiction work since "Tuesdays with Morrie."
