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Panel To Ask: How Did Cho Avoid Scrutiny?

June 6, 2007

By Rex Bowman

The state panel reviewing the April massacre at Virginia Tech plans on Monday to delve into whether the state's mental-health system broke down and allowed the killer to ignore orders to get outpatient treatment in 2005.

But at the panel's third public meeting, it will not hear from the local mental-health agency that has already acknowledged failing to monitor the outpatient treatment that student gunman Seung-Hui Cho was ordered to receive.

Instead, the panel plans to hear a summary of Cho's brush with the state's mental-health system from James W. Stewart III, the state inspector general for mental health.

Stewart's appearance before the panel, which is meeting at George Mason University in Fairfax on June 11, could provide panel members with their first glimpse into how Cho was able to avoid scrutiny from law-enforcement and mental-health officials even as his troubled mind began to fashion a plot to commit mass murder.

"I anticipate being able to get the basics," said panel Chairman W. Gerald Massengill, a former state police superintendent. "It's going to be a very productive and healthy day."

Stewart said he will not go into any confidential details before the panel but will provide "a look at this critical incident and the systemic implications."

Massengill said Stewart's summary will take place in public, but panel members will meet with legal advisers behind closed doors to discuss how they might obtain Cho's counseling files despite restrictive federal privacy laws. The international law firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP has agreed to give pro bono advice to the review panel, Massengill said.

In the coming days individual members of the panel will also conduct private interviews of representatives of the local mental-health agency, said Jim Kudla, spokesman for the Arlington-based consulting firm TriData Corp., which is acting as the panel's staff.

Cho killed 27 fellow students and five faculty members on April 16 before shooting himself.

In late 2005, following a complaint from a female student that he had bothered her with unwanted computer messages, Cho was involuntarily sent to Carilion St. Albans Behavioral Center near Radford for an overnight stay and a mental evaluation. The next day, a special justice found him to be a danger to himself but not to others and ordered him to receive outpatient treatment.

State law requires the New River Valley Community Services Board to set up a plan of care for mentally ill patients released into the community for outpatient care. But last month, Dr. Les Saltzberg told the Richmond Times-Dispatch that his agency never knew Cho was in outpatient care, had no representative present at Cho's commitment hearing and never received an order to devise a treatment plan as state law requires.

Saltzberg said an agency representative formerly attended the hearings, but the practice was abandoned years ago. Agency spokesman Mike Wade said the decision to stop attending the hearings was an administrative action that occurred during a time of budget belt-tightening. In the wake of the massacre, the agency has decided to once again send a representative to the hearings.

Contact staff writer Rex Bowman at rbowman@timesdispatch.com or (540) 344-3612.