WASHINGTON, 20 April 2007 — Aiming two black handguns at the camera and muttering rambling accusations, the college student who killed 32 people on the Virginia Tech campus Monday before killing himself made sure that his voice would be heard after the worst mass shooting in the nation’s history.
“This didn’t have to happen,” Cho Seung-hui, 23, said in one clip from what anchorman Brian Williams described as a “multimedia manifesto” mailed to NBC News in the two hours between the bursts of gunfire that morning.
On the NBC Nightly News on Wednesday, the network broadcast some of what it received. In an image evocative of a video game character stance, Cho wore a backward black ball cap, military-style vest and black gloves and aimed two guns. The network said the package contained a rambling and often profane video and 43 photographs, including 11 that showed him aiming guns at the camera.
Long before he massacred the 32 people, Cho was bullied by fellow students at school who mocked his shyness and the strange way he talked, former classmates said. Chris Davids, a Virginia Tech student who graduated from Westfield High School in Chantilly, Virginia, with Cho in 2003, recalled that the South Korean immigrant almost never opened his mouth and would ignore attempts to strike up a conversation.
Once, in English class, the teacher had the students read aloud and, when it was Cho’s turn, he just looked down in silence, Davids recalled. Finally, after the teacher threatened him 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.
“Your Mercedes wasn’t enough, you brats,” Cho, who came to the US in 1992 and whose parents work at a dry cleaners in suburban Washington, said in the often-incoherent video. “Your golden necklaces weren’t enough, you snobs. Your trust funds wasn’t enough. Your vodka and cognac wasn’t enough. All your debaucheries weren’t enough. Those weren’t enough to fulfill your hedonistic needs. You had everything.”
The package helped explain one of the biggest mysteries about the massacre: Where the gunman was and what he did during that two-hour window between the first burst of gunfire, at a high-rise dorm, and the second attack, at a classroom building. NBC News President Steve Capus said the package was sent by overnight delivery but apparently had the wrong postal code and was not opened until Wednesday. An alert postal employee brought the package to NBC’s attention after noticing the Blacksburg return address and a name similar to the words reportedly found scrawled in red ink on Cho’s arm after the bloodbath, “Ismail Ax,” NBC said.
With a backlash developing against the media for airing sickening pictures from Cho, Fox News Channel said it would stop and other networks said they would severely limit their use.
Family members of victims canceled plans to appear on NBC’s “Today” show yesterday because they “were very upset” with the network for showing the pictures, “Today” host Meredith Vieira said.
NBC said the material was aired because it helped to answer the question of why Cho did what he did.
Steven Salaita, an assistant professor in the English Department of Virginia Tech, said he was not on campus when the attacks occurred, but said he is bothered by the repetitive coverage of Cho. “The repetitiveness with which the videos are being shown is pretty painful for the entire Virginia Tech community. I do believe that Cho knew it would be replayed repeatedly which is probably why he sent it to begin with,” said Salaita.
Emad Saif, an English-language student from Jeddah, said he had been unable to sleep Wednesday night with the killer’s pictures, which were played over TV, haunting him. Saif, who is in the United States with his family, said he and his family would stay nonetheless. “The American people are all nice here. One of my neighbors came to see me immediately after the attack. He’s American, and he asked about my family, and if we were okay.”
Virginia Gov. Timothy Kaine is appointing a panel to investigate the shootings. The panel will review Cho’s mental health history and how police responded to the tragedy. The panel will submit a report in two to three months, and will include former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge.
