VA - Virginia Tech Shooting, 32 murdered, 23 injured, 16 April 2007

[Taximom]

I would love for a professional to psycho-analyze that play. I can't help but wonder if he wrote parts of this from his own personal history.

Pretty sick.

What struck me was the care and concern that others apparently showed Cho at college. Ian MacFarlane and others are right about one thing-there isn't a number to call to say "watch out for this guy-he has issues." At least they tried though.

 

[poco]

I would love for a professional to psycho-analyze that play. I can't help but wonder if he wrote parts of this from his own personal history.

Pretty sick.

What struck me was the care and concern that others apparently showed Cho at college. Ian MacFarlane and others are right about one thing-there isn't a number to call to say "watch out for this guy-he has issues." At least they tried though.

Strange how he and a few of his friends thought of Cho immediately when they heard of the shootings...........

 

[Shadow205]

I agree, I will also point out that seeing someone shot point blank in the head would be enough to shock anyone into submission. It is horrific and mind blowing what happens to the human body when a bullet hits it at high speed. These kids were probably sprayed with brains and blood and bone. I don't mean to be so graphic, but to question why they didn't react differently is to minimize what their eyes were witness to in that very moment. None of us were there, it had to have been horrific.
I am constantly surprised at how shocking it is to see a human body mangled and I see it every day at work. This was theri professor who had just been up teaching them in lecture, and then his head is blown apart, it had to have been more sureal than those kids worst nightmere.
It looks nothing like television, much much worse.

Kcksum,
Just curious...are you in LE or medical field?

 

[KarlK]

I agree Mystery! The second shooting doesn't at first appearance look like a crime of passion. Very well thought out.
I remember hearing something a while back about 18 asian terrorists being found and stopped from some terrorist attacks they were plotting here in the US. I tried to google the info and the only thing I came up with was the Alberto Gonzales website where he is bragging about this plot being foiled.

This has nothing to do with terrorism, it's not some religious fanatic seeking a celestial harem, it's about a demented individual acting on his own volition. In a sense this is worse than a terrorist attack because there is nothing that can be done to prevent it.

Second shooting wasn't a crime of passion it was a crime of insanity, the deed of a sicko that finally flipped over. The guy may have been from Korea but he could have been from Ohio or Texas or California that it wouldn't have made a difference, psychopaths go berzerk for reasons that don't make sense to normal individuals, typically they overreact (understatement) to unpleasant but normal situations, such as losing a job or a girlfriend/spouse.

Some evoke the possibility of terrorism because of the 2-hour interval between killings, but the delay between the first and second shooting is not without precedent; it happened at Texas State and with that kid from Oregon or Washington state. In both cases the killers first shot people they were close to then changed locations and started killing indiscriminately a few hours later.

 

[KarlK]

This is so classic for these kind of shooting sprees. LONER, quiet; heavily dependent on girlfriend or other person.

would rather see her dead than with someone else Then decides he's going to kill a bunch of others out of anger. (Charles Whitman)

It's classic. He's not a Jihadist ; he's a nutcase. What makes him different is that he's from South Korea; although there are plenty of Asian murders, we had one here in this town not long ago, but he murdered one person, his teacher.

This kind of mass murder can run through all walks of life, differing nationalities.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

 

[Taximom]

The 2nd play is up (same link as above), but I can't get the link for the last one or two pages of it to work. It's just as twisted as the first play though.

 

[Floh]

He may have originally been from Korea - arrived when he was 8 in 1991, if i recall correctly - but i contend he was American boy, despite not having citizenship. he'd lived in America for 16 of his formative years.

but he wasn't like a normal American boy, of course. he will be remembered for all the wrong reasons forever in history.

 

[reb]

god, those were quite possibly the worst things i've ever read. and since when do teachers put up with plays being written by students that are full of cuss words every 2 seconds..??? is this what they are accepting as creative writing nowadays...?? i can understand using it for emphasis here and there (which i do) but this guy had 'm-f'er this and m-f'er that every oher word. unbelievable. i would hate to be a teacher these days if this is a lot of what they see.

anyway... i also am waiting to hear that this guy spent most of his time playing online computer games.. like world of warcraft, etc. it also seems apparent that he came form some kind of situation of domestic violence.. he seems way too familiar with it, judging by his first play. and what's with the pedophile/molestation theme? i do hope after reading that stuff (and observing his behavior) that school officials contacted his PARENTS along with referring him to a counsellor for drugs. drugs an't fix that kind of sociopathic behavior.... and his parents definitely should have been made aware (if they weren't already) that he was a bomb waiting to go off. the time is over when we can ignore these kinds of 'deeply disturbed loners'. not that being a loner is a bad thing in itself.. not at all. but this guy was WAY beyond your normal level of 'troubled'. so school officials have really got to start paying more attention to this.. and have some kind of program in place to deal with it- BEFORE they snap.
also, it's going to get to the point where every time you go into or out of a college, you're gonna have to go through a checkpoint and be searched like at the airport. unbelievable. 200,000 years of human civilization.. and it's brought us to THIS.......??? .......great.

 

[Shadow205]

List of confirmed deceased
Andrew Cothern
April 17, 2007 8:10 AM
(Last Update: 2:08 PM)

Jeremy Herbstritt, Spring Township, Pa., Civil engineering (grad student)
Rachael Elizabeth Hill, Richmond, freshman
Ross Abdallah Alameddine, Saugus, Mass., sophomore, English
Caitlin Hammaren, Westtown, N.Y., sophomore, International Studies and French
Mary Karen Reed, Annandale, Va., freshman
Leslie Sherman, Springfield, Va., junior, History
Ryan C. Clark, Martinez, Georgia; senior, Biology, English, Psychology
Emily Jane Hilscher, Woodville, Va.; freshman, Animal and Poultry Sciences, Equine Science
Christopher James Bishop, 35-year-old German professor
Daniel O’Neil; Lincoln, Rhode Island
Maxine Turner; Vienna, Va.; Senior, Chemical Engineering
Henry Lee; Roanoke, Va.; Freshman, Computer Engineering
Matt La Porte; Dumont, N.J.; Freshman, University Studies
G.V. Loganathan; Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering
Juan Ortiz; Graduate Student, Civil Engineering
Jarrett Lane; Narrows, Va.; Senior, Civil Engineering
Caitlin Hammaren; Sophomore, International Studies and French
Liviu Librescu; Professor, Engineering Science & Mechanics
Kevin Granata; Professor, Engineering Science & Mechanics
Reema Samaha; Centreville, Va.; Freshman

 

[ember]

I just read the whole play.
It is hard to believe a 23 yo wrote that.
It was violent... but also very child-like in his writing. He must not have been all that bright....


On another note....
Also, I guess we can rule out the first girl shot in the dorm as being his girlfriend.

 

[CatMama3]

The shooter was probably silently planning something like this for a long time. He seemed very disassociated from the world around him. From what I've read, his social detachment goes back to his life in Centreville, long before he came to VTech. IMO, he was another example of an antisocial personality who chose to "vent his spleen" on his unsuspecting classmates and teachers before taking himself out. And if he refused to communicate with others, no-one, short of a real psychic, could have determined that he would act on his violent, vengeful thoughts.

I think the students' reactions were probably very normal in situations of unimaginable stress like this. It's basic human nature. They expect to feel safe in a school environment, especially in a classroom. When they're suddenly confronted with someone shooting live rounds at close range at them, they can barely shift mental gears to save themselves, much less tackle the shooter. Many of them may have been focused solely on the gun and not the person firing it.

Despite the violence that seems to go on around us all the time, we still can't imagine it happening to us (unless it has). It's a coping mechanism to deal with the uncertainty and chaos of everyday life. If we really thought about all the horrible things that could happen to us in any given situation, we'd never get out of bed in the morning.

Just adding my thoughts. My sympathies to VTech and the students.

 

[reb]

i really would like to know what his parents have to say. i'm sure they are in shock, heartbroken, etc.... but HOW COULD THEY NOT KNOW that their kid was so sick and unstable??? surely they must have had a clue. and what the hell went on inside that home? if everything was fine, then where else would he have gotten all this stuff? i am getting a huge red flag that there was some kind of serious sadism in that house.. in some form. i mean he may have already been unstable from genetics or something else... but all that domestic violence in his play... go ahead, try and convince me he just made all that up out of the blue.

 

[LaWanda]

anyway... i also am waiting to hear that this guy spent most of his time playing online computer games.. like world of warcraft, etc.

I play World of Warcraft and I'm a Pre-Kindergarten Teacher, and before that, I was a Director at a Daycare center. You can't really base someone's penchant for violence by what GAMES they play.

 

[cynpat2000]

i really would like to know what his parents have to say. i'm sure they are in shock, heartbroken, etc.... but HOW COULD THEY NOT KNOW that their kid was so sick and unstable??? surely they must have had a clue. and what the hell went on inside that home? if everything was fine, then where else would he have gotten all this stuff? i am getting a huge red flag that there was some kind of serious sadism in that house.. in some form. i mean he may have already been unstable from genetics or something else... but all that domestic violence in his play... go ahead, try and convince me he just made all that up out of the blue.

I agree 100%. They had to have known that he was seriously disturbed.

 

[Nova]

I am a playwright and taught playwriting for years at an equivalent university.

These plays may be terrible, but they aren't atypical, particularly for a general playwriting class. Students arrive having watched years of violent and profane movies and TV and tend to write what they have seen (as opposed to what they know, unfortunately).

I've only read the Richard McBeef play, but it takes its premise from Shakespeare's Hamlet (which may have been the assignment).

Many of the comments at the link seem to suggest the professor should have foreseen this tragedy based on Seung's playwriting; but if every student (or even most students) who wrote such assignments went on shooting rampages, I can promise you all the universities would be empty by now.

 

[PaperDoll]

Oh my, I wonder if Hollywood will make a movie (horror flick) out of his writings...

Did he have any siblings?

 

[Hopeful One]

That is so scary. Scary to think someone's mind works that way. And also sad that so many around him knew he had issues but there's nothing they can do about it.

It's almost like a stalker. You know he/she is capable of something horrible but you can't do much to stop the something horrible until something horrrible happens.

 

[Hopeful One]

Oh my, I wonder if Hollywood will make a movie (horror flick) out of his writings...

Did he have any siblings?

I think I just read somewhere on here that he has a sister that goes (or went) to Princeton.

 

[heavenlydaze]

I agree 100%. They had to have known that he was seriously disturbed.

I would be more interested to hear what his former teachers (Grade School, High School, etc) had to say. It could be that there was something wrong in the home, or he could have been very mentally ill for some time. Some parents are in deep denial of a mentally ill child, not WANTING to see the signs that can be obvious to an outsider (I had a close friend years ago that was in denial), but teachers usually have a different perspective.I'll admit I don't know much about mental illness, but I think I've read that some illnesses can get progressivly worse over time (hearing voices, etc). I'm sure we'll learn much more about his family life as this investigation progresses. It's all so very heart breaking.

 

[Nova]

That is so scary. Scary to think someone's mind works that way. And also sad that so many around him knew he had issues but there's nothing they can do about it.

We're all speculating based on limited info, of course, but I'd say his behavior in class and with other students is more alarming than his plays. (That is not to say I think someone should have "known" he would do this.)