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*Updated* Shooting in Virginia school (pg. 13)
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| XaNaX |
| quote: | Originally posted by Dopey
It might have stopped those 33 people dying. |
Or he might have killed more people with a huge bomb.
The 'might' game never goes anywhere |
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| josh4 |
| quote: | The Question Mark in Harper Hall
By John Cloud
The Chos of suburban Seoul, South Korea, didn't have much. They lived in a rented 430-sq. ft. basement apartment, according to the Korean paper Chosun Ilbo, and when they set off for the U.S. in 1992, Cho Seong-Tae told his landlord that the family was going to America "because it is difficult to live here" and that it would be better to live in a place where he is unknown.
Cho's son Seung-Hui was only a first grader at Shinchang Elementary when the family left in August 1992. The boy mostly grew up in the U.S. and usually Americanized his name as Seung Cho.
The Chos alighted first in Detroit but eventually settled in Centreville, Va., where they live in a two-story, cream-colored townhouse with two vegetable patches in the back, one with lettuces just beginning to sprout. They are said to be a hard-working couple who speak only a little English and run a dry-cleaning business. Their daughter graduated from Princeton in 2004 and, according to the Washington Post, works as a contractor for the State Department. The Chos are said to be cooperating with police; they allowed a 90-minute search of their home on Monday evening.
At Westfield High in nearby Chantilly, Cho was a quiet boy. Joseph Boayu, a high-school acquaintance, said Cho was so withdrawn that "sometimes you'd ask him a question, and he'd not even acknowledge that you asked him." He also said Cho earned A's in math.
At Virginia Tech, Cho sometimes referred to himself as Question Mark and spoke in a whisper, if at all; one of his suite mates told CNN last night that "he was just like a shadow." Mostly what he did every day was this: sit in the spare common area of the six-man suite in Harper Hall and type on his laptop. But he didn't spend endless hours on Facebook or wired into his iPod. He also never talked about his family. He didn't seem to have friends, and he rarely spoke, even to his roommate. He ventured out to attend class, to eat and, since February, to work out at the gym for the first time.
It was a big deal in the second-floor suite to get a hello out of him. A suite mate, Karan Grewal, a senior from Northern Virginia, told TIME that "we just thought he was shy." Grewal said there was no sign of medication in Cho's room, no books, no posters on his walls. While Grewal acknowledged that it would have been possible for Cho to hide guns in the suite, he said Cho never talked about weapons or killing. He simply didn't talk at all.
For years, Cho's odd behavior indicated to some university authorities that he could be dangerous. In coming weeks, the school will almost certainly have to explain why it did not do more to help him or expel him before his massacre.
In December 2005, campus police and mental health professionals in Blacksburg, Va., arranged to have Cho committed to a state psychiatric facility. Cho's brief hospitalization for suspected mental illness was disclosed this morning by Virginia Tech police chief Wendell Flinchum, who said Cho was taken to St. Albans psychiatric hospital in Radford, Va., on Dec. 13 of that year after two women students (neither of whom was among Cho's shooting victims) called campus police complaining that Cho had made troubling contacts with them. A third person — identified last night on CNN as a suite mate of Cho's — had also told police at the time that Cho was contemplating suicide.
Dr. Harvey Barker, head of the community mental-health agency called by campus police, told TIME's Michael Lindenberger that his agency had performed an involuntary psychiatric evaluation of Cho before he was committed to St. Albans. "We did an independent evaluation at the request of the police department," Barker said. "We did not make an recommendation [as to whether he was fit to remain on campus or in school]. That was not our role." Neither the campus police department's nor the hospital's records on Cho were part of the material accessed by the state's background-check system for firearms purchases.
Nikki Giovanni, the feminist poet and teacher at Virginia Tech who stirred the campus convocation yesterday with a poem, had Cho in a poetry class two years ago — and it wasn't long before she had him tossed out. "There was something mean about this boy," she said. "Troubled kids get drunk and jump off buildings. It was the meanness that bothered me." Giovanni recalled that Cho came to class in dark sunglasses and a hat. And every day, from very early in the semester, she would ask him to remove the one and then the other. "We would have this sort of ritual," she said.
Giovanni recalled that Cho "was very intimidating to my other students." Eventually, other kids began skipping class because of his behavior. The poet then wrote creative writing department boss Lucinda Roy a letter — in part to create a record — asking Roy to remove him from class. Giovanni said Cho turned in material that wasn't poetry but just junk. "He was writing weird things," she recalled. "It was terrible.... It was just intimidating."
In two achingly bad plays Cho authored — they were posted by AOL yesterday — he suggests he may have been sexually abused. In both plays, a schoolboy named John accuses authority figures of molesting him. In a play Cho titled Mr. Brownstone, John says the eponymous teacher raped him. "I wanna kill him," John says. In the other play, Richard McBeef, the accused molester kills John with his bare hands in the end.
Cho exhibited strange sexual behavior at Virginia Tech. Roy told CNN that he was taking pictures of women under desks, and two men identified as suite mates of Cho's told the network he had stalked three women. They said Cho usually slept fitfully and with the lights on. During the months that Cho lived in the dorm, his suite mates said he never had a single visitor — no girlfriends, not even family.
"He seemed to be crying behind his sunglasses," Roy told TIME. "It was like talking to a hole sometimes.... Everything emptied out and seemed very dark when he entered." Roy shared her concerns with campus police and counselors, but they told her that unless his threats were explicit, there was little they could do. So Roy, in part because the school couldn't prevent Cho from taking courses, took him on for one-on-one classes herself to keep him away from other students.
Campus security, meanwhile, offered Giovanni protection. But the poet said, "He didn't scare me." She learned about the shootings on Monday, while flying back from the West coast. When she first learned the suspect was an Asian male, she said, "In the front of my mind, I knew it was Cho."
- Reported by Michael Duffy, Elaine Shannon, Michael Lindenberger and Tracy Samantha Schmidt/Blacksburg, Michael Weisskopf/Washington, and Adam Zagorin/Centreville
http://www.time.com/time/nation/art...1612003,00.html |
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So the school is definitely going to have to explain why they didn't do more. There was certainly a disturbing history that they were aware of.
As for the gun debate, there are real questions on why Cho's mental hospital and police record backgrounds weren't evaluated in the gun purchases. |
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| HardTranceProd |
there's a new development in this story
apparently Cho forwarded some manifesto to NBC News after his first shooting, but before the second one.
Go to nbcnews.com for more info |
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| pmoisse |
http://view.break.com/271068
Here's a fine example of some of the honourable, responsible gun owners in action
(jokes, sarcasm...honest :))
At least the retard who did this likely killed any chance of being able to breed. |
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| MisterOpus1 |
| quote: | Originally posted by XaNaX
I'm not sure how these events are connected to those in Iraq but if you want to try and make that point for me I'll listen. |
I believe I already did. Here it is again, just in case you missed it (again):
| quote: | My point was not to be tangential to the topic at hand. Rather, I was trying to point out that I don't think gun control laws is the stronger issue to bring up that points towards mass murders right now, and I used the Iraq War and the daily mass killings taking place there for a larger context.
http://www.tranceaddict.com/forums/...66&pagenumber=9
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Which was my reply to Shakka (and he replied back saying he wasn't necessarily addressing his comment directly towards me). And then I replied to you:
| quote: | The funny thing is, I tend to agree with your point about this event needing to be held in context and not create a knee-jerk reaction to the cries of gun-control. The problem with you (among many) is, that's exactly the point that I laid out with my example of what is occurring in Iraq with these types of deaths occurring daily,
http://www.tranceaddict.com/forums/...6&pagenumber=12 |
So that was my point. If you still do not understand, ask away or PM me if you like. But honestly, I really don't know how I can clarify this any better.
| quote: | | And for once, I guess I agree with you. The comments posted by those two people about 'rushing' a gunman or whatever are complete and utter bull Monday morning quarterbacking. To suggest that someone under gunfire from an unknown attacker should have 'counted gunshots' and then rushed him is ing ignorant. I'd like to ask that genius how I'm going to count shots when I don't know what kind of gun he has and how many bullets the magazine holds. And I'd like that other tool to make his comment about it not being a machine gun or whatever while I'm shooting a 9mm at him. I don't know the political affiliation of those two guys but they are idiots. |
Well I'm glad we're agreeing on something here.
| quote: | | As for my 'liberal' comments, you may not like them but they are founded. Liberals love to use events like this to inact worthless gun control regulations in this country. |
Your comments may be founded in some "libruls", but not all of them (including myself), just like comments like this from your Wingnut leaders like Michelle Malkin:
| quote: | “Enough is enough, indeed. Enough of intellectual disarmament. Enough of physical disarmament. You want a safer campus? It begins with renewing a culture of self-defense — mind, spirit and body. It begins with two words: Fight back.“
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/ar...selfdefens.html |
Or this exchange with John Gibson and Andrew Napolitano who wants to arm all students and teachers:
| quote: | GIBSON: So, theoretically, in this lecture hall where all 31 were killed, there could have been someone with a carry permit carrying their gun to shoot the shooter?
NAPOLITANO: No, because the same people that just dropped the ball, as Bo just described, that allowed 32 additional people to die, also said: “Virginia lets you carry a gun at a gas station or a bank or a stadium, but not on a college campus, where you may protect kids.”
http://mediamatters.org/items/200704170001 |
Who in essence want to do away with the weapons-free zones in schools, which by all accounts seems a wee-bit like a knee-jerk reaction to me, don't cha think?
So the bottom line is, I think all knee-jerk reactions are just that - knee-jerk without due rationale thought and discussion. You're welcome to point them out to live long day, sir, but just remember the extremist finger can easily be pointed right back towards your side of the aisle as well. And in the end, all the finger-pointing at the knee-jerkers gets us absolutely nowhere. |
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| Groundhog Boy |
| quote: | Originally posted by pmoisse
So, since it's generally agreed upon (or not) that gun control cannot stop the criminals and the people who just lose their and shoot up a school like this guy did, what would be the reason why you hear so many stories about some dude who snapped and went on some rampage in the US?
Be it wielding a gun, car, knife, box cutter, whatever.
I know the statistics that were posted earlier in this thread don't sound as bad when listed on a per-capita basis, but , is it wrong to say that you hear more stories like this out of the US than other parts of the world?
I'm just asking rhetorical questions here, not trying to bash the US.
I know a lot of it has to do with gang violence perpetuated by illegal alien gangs and other pieces of like that (LazFX's story as example :(). But what keeps driving these otherwise semi-normal people to go postal and think it's a bright ing idea to start killing random people?
I guess for me, it's somewhat easier to have some understanding of where someone is coming from if they have a beef with someone (ex-wife, current wife's boyfriend, dude who cut you off in traffic, other gangs etc ad nauseum) but when there's no connection between the killer and the victims, it's even harder to try and comprehend. |
It's because the media focuses on it because Americans dying are more important than anyone else that dies. Yesterday, when I was getting ready for work, in 45 minutes, I don't think I saw anything other than this shooting being reported on CNN.
In other news hardly being reported because our media has only focused on 1 story for over 2 days now, 170 people died in coordinated bombing in Iraq. Not to be insensitive to the victims and their families from the Virginia Tech incident, but that's 5x as many people. And they, too, were civilian, people going to class, shopping in the market, visiting the sick and wounded in the hospital, etc. |
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| MisterOpus1 |
On a side note, this item today was a bit disturbing to see:
| quote: | Some news accounts have suggested that Cho had a history of antidepressant use, but senior federal officials tell ABC News that they can find no record of such medication in the government's files. This does not completely rule out prescription drug use, including samples from a physician, drugs obtained through illegal Internet sources, or a [/b] gap in the federal database[/b], but the sources say theirs is a reasonably complete search.
http://www.abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=3048108&page=2 |
Anyone catch that? Isn't it nice to know that our federal government has tabs on everyone's prescription meds? This was actually an Act passed in 2005 in bipartisan fashion, which is really nuts to me. Glenn Greenwald has more on this:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/
I think this should be somewhat alarming no matter what political affiliation one belongs to. |
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| Shakka |
| quote: | Originally posted by MisterOpus1
On a side note, this item today was a bit disturbing to see:
Anyone catch that? Isn't it nice to know that our federal government has tabs on everyone's prescription meds? This was actually an Act passed in 2005 in bipartisan fashion, which is really nuts to me. Glenn Greenwald has more on this:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/
I think this should be somewhat alarming no matter what political affiliation one belongs to. |
Yikes. That makes me cringe a bit as well. I suppose their thinking was that if it's something that's regulated there should be statistical reporting as well. Then again, you watch a show like 24 and you begin to assume they already have tabs on everything under the sun! Cash only!!! |
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| Dopey |
| quote: | Originally posted by Shakka
And it might not've. |
I bet the dead people would've taken the 2% chance of living over 0%. |
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| pmoisse |
| quote: | Originally posted by Groundhog Boy
It's because the media focuses on it because Americans dying are more important than anyone else that dies. Yesterday, when I was getting ready for work, in 45 minutes, I don't think I saw anything other than this shooting being reported on CNN.
In other news hardly being reported because our media has only focused on 1 story for over 2 days now, 170 people died in coordinated bombing in Iraq. Not to be insensitive to the victims and their families from the Virginia Tech incident, but that's 5x as many people. And they, too, were civilian, people going to class, shopping in the market, visiting the sick and wounded in the hospital, etc. |
I agree with what you're saying, but if incidents such as this are far more rare in other countries, wouldn't that earn the story even more attention? You're right about the excessive media attention though. Ultimately, it gives the killer the spotlight they always wanted (especially now after the release of his video). Also, with 24 hour news, they have to fill those 24 hours somehow lol
CNN Europe and BBC1 have been fairly balanced since yesterday morning between the Baghdad bombings and this shooting spree.
The local papers ran it as their cover yesterday, but I haven't been out yet today to see what's on the covers today. |
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| M.Johan |
| quote: | Originally posted by XaNaX
So what, should we ban all the guns then?
Ok, I'll go down to the car dealer, legally buy me a big ass Hummer H2 and drive it down a city sidewalk running over everyone in my way.
The point is that nutjobs will find a way to kill people. Getting rid of guns will not stop anything. |
Egyptian and Lebanese are from the victimes |
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| LazFX |
| quote: | Originally posted by MisterOpus1
On a side note, this item today was a bit disturbing to see:
Anyone catch that? Isn't it nice to know that our federal government has tabs on everyone's prescription meds? This was actually an Act passed in 2005 in bipartisan fashion, which is really nuts to me. Glenn Greenwald has more on this:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/
I think this should be somewhat alarming no matter what political affiliation one belongs to. |
yeah, the fed does track that. The data base is still in its infancy, maybe about 35%-45% filled. they suggested in the last report that by 2012 all records of people's RX should be up to 65%-75%..... we Americans love our pillz. :)
THe Database does need a court order or a judges sig to get the info, but it is only numbers and another branch has the key.....
and yes it is scary
:nervous: |
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