BLACKSBURG, Va. – Cho Seung-Hui, the 23-year-old Virginia Tech student who shot and killed 32 people the morning of April 16 is being described as a loner by university officials. Cho was a South Korean native living in the U.S. as a permanent legal resident. He was a senior English student who lived in Harper Residence Hall, police said.
Cho opened fire in a Virginia Tech dorm and then, two hours later, shot up a classroom across campus Monday, killing 32 people in the deadliest shooting rampage in U.S. history, according to the Associated Press. He then committed suicide, bringing the death toll to 33.
Students complained that there were no public-address announcements or other warnings on campus after the first burst of gunfire. They said the first word they received from the university was an E-mail more than two hours into the rampage – around the time Cho struck again.
Investigators still have not offered any motive for the attack, according to the Associated Press.
The shootings spread panic and confusion on campus. Witnesses reported students jumping out the windows of a classroom building to escape the gunfire. SWAT team members with helmets, flak jackets and assault rifles swarmed over the campus. Students and faculty members carried out some of the wounded themselves, without waiting for ambulances to arrive.
The massacre took place at opposite sides of the 2,600-acre campus, beginning at about 7:15 a.m. at West Ambler Johnston, a co-ed dormitory that houses 895 people, and continuing at least two hours later at Norris Hall, an engineering building about a half-mile away, authorities said.
Two people were killed in a dormitory room, and 31 others were killed in the engineering building, including the gunman, police said.
Campus police would not say how many weapons the gunman carried. However, according to the Associated Press, a law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigation was incomplete, said that the gunman had two pistols and multiple clips of ammunition.
Police said they were still investigating the shooting at the dorm when they got word of gunfire at the classroom building.
Associated Press reported that at least 26 people were being treated at three area hospitals for gunshot wounds and other injuries. Their exact conditions were not disclosed, but at least one was sent to a trauma center and six were in surgery.
The massacre Monday took place almost eight years to the day after the Columbine High bloodbath near Littleton, Colo. On April 20, 1999, two teenagers killed 12 fellow students and a teacher before taking their own lives.
Previously, the deadliest campus shooting in U.S. history was a rampage that took place in 1966 at the University of Texas at Austin, where Charles Whitman climbed the clock tower and opened fire with a rifle from the 28th-floor observation deck. He killed 16 people before police shot him to death.
