BLACKSBURG,
Va.- Long before he killed 32 people
in the worst mass shooting in U.S. history, Seung-Hui Cho was bullied by fellow high
school students who mocked his shyness
and the strange way he talked, former classmates said.
Cho, 23, a senior English major at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
in Blacksburg, killed 32 people in two attacks before taking his own life Monday. He sent a large multi-media package outlining his grievances against religion and the wealthy to NBC News, but police said Thursday that the material added little to their investigation.
The text, photographs and video in the package bristle with hatred toward unspecified people whom Cho, a South Korean immigrant, accused of having wronged him, adding to a portrait of a solitary man who rarely, if ever, managed normal social interactions.
Chris Davids, a Virginia Tech student who graduated with Cho from Westfield High School in Chantilly, Va., in 2003, recalled that Cho almost never opened his mouth and would ignore attempts to strike up a conversation.
Once, in an English class, the teacher had the students read aloud and, when it was Cho’s turn, he just looked down in silence, Davids recalled in an interview with The Associated Press.
Finally, after the teacher threatened to give him a failing grade for participation, Cho started to read in a strange, deep voice that sounded “like he had something in his mouth,” Davids said.
“As soon as he started reading, the whole class started laughing and pointing and saying, ‘Go back to China,’” Davids said.
Finally, after the teacher threatened to give him a failing grade for participation, Cho started to read in a strange, deep voice that sounded “like he had something in his mouth,” Davids said.
“As soon as he started reading, the whole class started laughing and pointing and saying, ‘Go back to China,’” Davids said.
Among Cho’s victims were Reema Samaha and Erin Peterson, who both graduated from Westfield High School last year. Police said it was not clear whether Cho singled them out.
‘The question mark kid’Virginia Tech student Alison Heck said a suitemate of hers on campus found a mysterious question mark scrawled on the dry erase board on her door. The young woman went to the same high school as Cho, according to her Facebook page.
‘The question mark kid’Virginia Tech student Alison Heck said a suitemate of hers on campus found a mysterious question mark scrawled on the dry erase board on her door. The young woman went to the same high school as Cho, according to her Facebook page.
Cho once scrawled a question mark on the sign-in sheet on the first day of a literature class, and other students came to know him as “the question mark kid.”
“I don’t know if she knew that it was him for sure,” Heck said. “I do remember that that fall that she was being stalked and she had mentioned the question mark. And there was a question mark on her door.”
Heck added: “She just let us know about it just in case there was a strange person walking around our suite.”
The young woman could not immediately be located for comment, via e-mail or telephone.
The focus Thursday slowly began turning away from the multimedia package Cho sent to NBC News on Monday after Col. Steven Flaherty, superintendent of the Virginia State Police, said the material added little to the investigation.
The focus Thursday slowly began turning away from the multimedia package Cho sent to NBC News on Monday after Col. Steven Flaherty, superintendent of the Virginia State Police, said the material added little to the investigation.
After killing two people in a Virginia Techdormitory — but before he slaughtered 30 more in a classroom building, Cho mailed NBC News the long, profanity-laced diatribe along with dozens of photographs and videos, boasting: “When the time came, I did it. I had to.”
“While there was some marginal value to the package we received, the fact of the matter is ... the package merely confirms what we already knew,” Flaherty said in a brief statement Thursday.
“While there was some marginal value to the package we received, the fact of the matter is ... the package merely confirms what we already knew,” Flaherty said in a brief statement Thursday.
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