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Officials: Cho Randomly Targeted His 32 Victims

April 25, 2007

By Carlos Santos & Rex Bowman

BLACKSBURG, Va. — Seung-Hui Cho appears to have been a truly indiscriminate killer who randomly targeted his 32 victims at Virginia Tech for dark reasons investigators now say they may never divine.

"We haven't been able to determine what precipitated the event," Col. W. Steven Flaherty, superintendent of Virginia State Police, told reporters yesterday, 10 days into his investigation.

Investigators said they have found no motive for the attack, despite scrutinizing a trailer-load of evidence — 500 pieces from Norris Hall alone — interviewing hundreds of people and trying to decipher a long and rambling videotaped and written confession that Cho mailed to NBC News.

Flaherty also said his investigators have found no links between Cho and any of his victims, even after reviewing the South Korean immigrant's e-mail and phone records and those of Emily Jane Hilscher, Cho's first victim.

"We may never make the link, if indeed there is one," Flaherty said. "At this particular point in time, we don't have a motive. We have sat down at night and talked about many, many potential motives. But there's no one motive we're certain of."

In a news conference that offered the most detailed police account yet, investigators said Cho murdered two students with two 9 mm shots at West Ambler Johnston Hall before killing 30 students and faculty members in Norris Hall on April 16. The Norris Hall rampage lasted nine minutes, police revealed.

The massacre ended with Cho firing a bullet into his skull as he heard police racing up the stairs of Norris Hall to confront him. Cho, 23, had chained and locked all three public entrances into the academic building to trap students and teachers inside, investigators said.

The locks also slowed police, who had to blast them open with shotguns, but officers apparently arrived in time to save some lives: They found live ammo near Cho's corpse.

Among the new findings announced during yesterday's news conference:

Witnesses saw Cho outside an entrance to West Ambler Johnston before 7 a.m., and he appeared to be waiting. However, campus Police Chief Wendell Flinchum said Cho apparently did not know Hilscher and did not follow her into the dorm when she arrived about 7 a.m.

Cho had nothing to do with two bomb threats sent to Tech in the three weeks before the attack. Still, a bomb-threat note was found near his body, and he is believed to have written it.

Cho had a class at Norris Hall this semester, but that class was not scheduled to be held April 16. None of the five faculty members killed were his teachers. Investigators do not know when Cho last attended any class.

In the weeks before the attack, Cho practiced his marksmanship at a couple of shooting ranges in the area.

Cho shot each of his victims at West Ambler Johnston once. At Norris, using the 9 mm Glock pistol and a .22-caliber Walther P22, he fired more than 170 rounds.

Cho prepared his angry manifesto of video recordings, pictures and an 1,800-word document sometime before the April 16 killings.

Searches of the killer's dorm room and sections of the campus this week were part of a comprehensive effort to uncover possible new evidence. Flaherty said there was no specific reason for the searches, and more may be conducted, as the investigation is expected to continue for several months.

Those who knew Cho, an English major from Centreville, described him as a nearly mute loner who avoided conversation, made no friends during his four years at Tech and spent hours in his room, alone, downloading music onto his computer.

Cho first came to the attention of Tech officials in late 2005, when two female students complained that he had made unwanted contact. One student said Cho approached her in person; the other student reported she was contacted by e-mail.

He was committed to a psychiatric facility as a danger to himself and others but was released the following day after a justice ordered him to undergo outpatient treatment. There is no evidence that he received the court-ordered treatment.

In early February, Cho bought the .22-caliber handgun; he bought the 9 mm in March. He bought ammunition clips, but not ammunition, on eBay. He also bought chains and locks at area stores.

During yesterday's on-campus news conference — the last investigators plan to hold — Flinchum again recalled the carnage at Norris Hall as "the most horrific scene ever encountered" in his career. He said the death toll could have been higher, but two medics who accompanied police into the building started treating the wounded immediately.

"There's no telling how many lives they saved that morning," Flinchum said.

Also on campus last night, the College of Engineering held a memorial service at Cassell Coliseum for the 14 victims from its department. About 500 people turned out to hear tributes to the students and professors who were killed.

"We need to give an unflinching acknowledgement of our grief," said Richard Benson, the college's dean. "We're sad today, and we'll be sad for a long time."

But Benson said that the support given to the Virginia Tech family from around the world has helped diminish that sorrow. "The world is filled with kind and caring people," he said.

Carlos Santos and Rex Bowman are staff writers at the Richmond Times-Dispatch.