April 17, 2007 School Shooter was
South Korean,
Laughed while Killing By Chris Cermak
Blacksburg (Virginia)
A 23-year-old South Korean student was the apparently lone gunman in
a shooting rampage at a US university, laughing as he turned
classrooms and stairwells into a "horrific" scene of death, police
and a witness said Tuesday.
As the nation reeled under the worst shooting in US history,
officials said at least 12 people remained hospitalized after
Monday's shootings at Virginia Polytechnic University, where the
gunman killed 32 students and faculty before turning his weapon on
himself.
Authorities identified the suspected shooter as Cho Seung-Hui, a
South Korean resident of the US who was studying English in his last
undergraduate year.
Two handguns, a 9-millimetre and a 22-calibre, were found in the
Norris Hall classroom building where most of the victims were shot
and the gunman killed himself, officials said.
Tina Harrison was taking a test in Norris Hall when the carnage
began. "We heard horrible screams, screams of agony, and then sort
of maniacal laughter in the first minutes of the shots being fired,"
she told Cable News Network (CNN).
"We heard the gunshots getting closer and closer. I counted 24 shots
within one minute. We could smell the gunsmoke and feel the
vibrations shaking the walls of the building," she said.
US President George W. Bush planned to attend a memorial service
later Tuesday at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, a small town 750 km
southwest of Washington. Students held an overnight vigil to mourn
their slain colleagues and teachers.
Lab results confirmed that one of the weapons was used both in the
classroom shootings and in a dormitory shooting more than two hours
earlier, said university police chief Wendell Flinchum.
Though it was too early to conclude that Cho was the gunman at both
locations, there was no evidence of a second shooter, Virginia state
police chief Steve Flaherty said.
Police were still looking into possible motives, but there was
speculation the shootings followed an argument between a young
couple over alleged infidelity.
Cho lived on campus and his body was found in one of the classrooms,
he said.
The South Korean embassy Tuesday said in a statement that it was
"shocked and dismayed by the violent crime".
Police described a gruesome scene inside Norris Hall. Victims were
found in four classrooms and stairwells, and personal effects "were
strewn about the entire second floor", Flaherty told a news
conference.
Dozens of investigators were working around the clock on "a horrific
crime scene," he said.
The shooting was the worst in US history, surpassing a 1991 spree in
Texas when a man rammed his car through a restaurant window and shot
patrons and staff. He killed 23 people and then fatally shot
himself.
In the worst US school shooting, 15 people died in the 1999
Columbine High School massacre in Colorado.
Monday's shootings took place in two stages, police said. An initial
shooting at the student residential building of West Ambler Johnston
Hall, in which two people died, was under investigation when news
emerged of the second round of killings at Norris Hall.
The two people shot dead in the first incident were a female
reported to have been the girlfriend of the gunman and a student
resident assistant.
Police and college authorities have faced criticism for not
informing students that there was an armed individual on campus in
the two-and-a-half-hour gap between the two shootings.
Many students expressed anger at the fact that the first e-mails and
messages alerting students to the danger came some two hours after
the initial shooting.
Flinchum said that a "person of interest" was being questioned after
the first shooting when authorities were alerted to the second round
of gunfire.
World leaders expressed shock over the killings. British Prime
Minister Tony Blair expressed Britain's "profound sadness" at events
and mourned the "terrible loss of innocent lives".
The Vatican said Pope Benedict XVI was saddened by the "senseless
tragedy.
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