‘Loner’ Cho Wrote Death-Filling s
By Kim Rahn
Staff Reporter
Cho Seung-hui, the gunman of the campus shooting at Virginia Tech, was a loner, according to almost everyone around him.
Born in 1984, Cho, 23, senior who was majoring in English, emigrated to the United States in 1992 when he was eight years old. He was a resident alien and last renewed his green card in October 2003.
His parents run a laundromat in Centreville, Virginia, and his sister is a graduate of Princeton University.
According to graduates of Westfield High School that Cho attended and students and professors at Virginia Tech, he was a loner, barely speaking to anyone.
American media reported Cho had shown recent signs of violent, aberrant behavior, including setting a fire in a dormitory room and allegedly stalking some women.
The Chicago Tribune said investigators believe Cho had been taking medication for depression at some point.
After killing two people at a campus dorm, Cho returned to his own dorm and wrote a long, rambling note there, according to ABC news and the tribune.
He wrote, ``You caused me to do this,'' and other railing words against ``rich kids,'' ``debauchery,'' and ``deceitful charlatans'' on campus.
Cho then headed to the Norris Hall where he killed 30 people and himself. On the inside of one of his arms, words ``Ismail Ax'' were written in red ink, the tribune cited unidentified sources.
``He was a loner, and we had difficulty finding information about him,'' Larry Hincker, the university's vice president, told reporters.
Korean students of the school said with one accord that they did not know much about him, adding Cho never appeared at Korean students' gatherings.
``There were several of us in English who became concerned when we had him in class, for various reasons. And so I contacted some people to try to get some help for him because I was deeply concerned,'' CNN quoted Lucinda Roy, one of Cho's professors, as saying.
Roy said that she privately tutored him for a time and that throughout her teaching career she had never seen a student as troubled as Cho.
Stephanie Derry, who had playwriting class with Cho, told the school newspaper, the Collegiate Times, that Cho's dramas were ``really gory, morbid and grotesque.''
One of his plays, which takes its name from the Guns `N' Roses song ``Mr. Brownstone,'' describes a crew of 17-year-olds who skip school to gamble at a casino and fantasize about killing their professor.
A line of the play says: ``I wanna watch him bleed like the way he made us kids bleed,'' says Jane.
The writings were shocking enough that a professor had pulled him from class, according to CNN.