Massacre On The Campus In U.S

[indian_blues]

one of the victim was a professor called Loganathan hails from Tamil nadu(India). ... his town was some 250km away from the city i live...wat a fateful end...

[zubin]

that's what curruption and injustice does to people and innocent victims

[abadani69]

This is F****** Sad!!!!!!!!!

[mike435]

that's what curruption and injustice does to people and innocent victims

are you talking abot the gunman
are you really going to make him a victom of socioty or even hint at that
not everything is the by product of socioty

[zubin]

It just shows how stupid US society is. With all their wealth and privilege, selfish people roam the whole country and are unable to cope with humanity in everyday life. They neglect and neglect and neglect because of their selfishness and this is what happens.

[indian_blues]

It just shows how stupid US society is. With all their wealth and privilege, selfish people roam the whole country and are unable to cope with humanity in everyday life. They neglect and neglect and neglect because of their selfishness and this is what happens.

Everyone is selfish.... ur explanation is vague... if u could explain more.

[indian_blues]

Indian victims as for now.


G.V. Loganathan

Minal Panchal

[indian_blues]

Indian embassy officials have confirmed that 26-year-old Minal Panchal, an Indian student at Virginia Tech University, is dead.

Minal, an architecture student had gone missing after Monday's shootout at the university.

University authorities have announced two or three hours ago that she was one of the causalities in the shooting, said Prof Kumar Mallikarjuna, Associate Professor, Virginia Tech.

The reason they could not confirm Minal was that she did not have an ID. It took them some time to find out who she was. They took the fingerprints and were trying to relate that to the immigration papers, he added.

Called 'Minu' by her friends, 26-year-old Minal Panchal went to Our Lady Of Remedy High School in Mumbai and later graduated from the Rizvi college of Architecture in Bandra, Mumbai.

Her neighbours remember her as a very bright student who ranked high in the CET exam.

She went to Virginia Tech University in August 2006. She was passionate about the environment and architecture and was also fond of reading, sketching, watching movies and spending time with friends.

Thousands of well-wishers have logged onto the web and paid their condolences to Minal or her Orkut web page.

Minal's father passed away a few years ago and her mother was reportedly visiting her other sister who also lives in the United States.

Minal is the second Indian who was killed in the shootout.

Indian professor killed

Prof GV Loganathan had also lost his life in the deadliest shootout in the US history.

The professor was killed while taking a class in mechanics. This was the second classroom that the gunman entered.

Professor Loganathan was born in Tamil Nadu's Erode district and taught in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Virginia campus.

His programme area was environmental and water resources engineering, and he had received many awards for excellence in teaching.

An alumnus of IIT-Kanpur, he completed his doctorate at the Purdue University and joined the Virginia Tech University in 1982.

In its reaction, the Kanpur IIT has condemned the shootout and held a condolence meeting.

IIT-Kanpur Director Sanjay Dhande said that the institute was trying to find out about any students who might be in Virginia.

I am deeply shocked to hear about the violence on the Virginia Tech campus. Dr Loganathan was a friend and colleague. I too have taught at Virginia Tech and know the campus, faculty members.

He was a simple, modest, family-oriented man who was just doing his duty and was unfortunately caught in the firing and succumbed to injuries. I am saddened and hope his family has the courage to get through this, said Dhande.

Family shocked

Professor Loganathan's family was in shock upon receiving the news of his death. His parents and two younger brothers find it difficult to believe he's no more.

The professor had told them that he was planning to move to India in a year or two.

It's a terrible shock. He called two days ago and said that he would come to India in two years, said Kannammal, Mother of Professor G V Loganathan.

Professor Loganathan is survived by his wife and two daughters, the elder of whom studies at Virginia Tech University.

The family says that the last rites will be conducted in the US, as the professor had wished, and nine of his family members, including his elderly parents, will be travelling to the US.

Four of them, including the professor's parents, don't have passports, but the government has assured that won't be a problem.

Source:
http://www.ndtv.com/convergence/ndtv...WEN20070009068

[mike435]

It just shows how stupid US society is. With all their wealth and privilege, selfish people roam the whole country and are unable to cope with humanity in everyday life. They neglect and neglect and neglect because of their selfishness and this is what happens.

You are correct about selfishness and neglect

but these shooting arnt happening every day they are not american culture

american culture is your right when you are encouraged not to help a homeless because you thinkk everything boils down to money and that it is that homeless own choice to be a homeless.

but that hanious act was not an american thing.

[zubin]

Everyone is selfish.... ur explanation is vague... if u could explain more.

Everyone is not selfish, that's nonsense. What you mean is that every act has a benefit. The difference is subtle and essential.

Its vague for you, but not vague. Neglect and selfishness leave social injustice unsolved on purpose, which naturally and justifiedly many take to heart, with some going nuts.

When you are doing injustice and can do something about it, but because of prejudice and selfishness you sustain the injustice, you are guilty of the result.

[Rasputin]

South Korea shocked by U.S. shooting link

South Koreans expressed shock Wednesday, as new details revealed that the Virginia Tech shooter was Cho Seung-Hui, who was born -- and lived for eight years -- in Seoul.

President Roh Moo-Hyun held a special meeting with aides Wednesday to discuss the shooting and figure out further steps to ease the situation.

The president is expected to make a statement of apology at an event in Seoul Wednesday afternoon. His office has already issued two statements of condolence about the mass killings.
On Tuesday, the presidential Blue House issued a condolence statement saying Roh "was shocked beyond description again over the fact that the tragic incident was caused by a South Korean native who has permanent residency" in the U.S., AP reported.

Thirty-two people were killed on the Blacksburg, Virginia, campus on Monday, the deadliest shooting in U.S. history.
Morning television news programs devoted much of their broadcasts to reports about the shooting and concerns about a backlash against South Koreans in the United States, as well as an adverse affect on U.S.-South Korean relations.

South Korean diplomats were traveling to the shooting site, AP reported Foreign Ministry spokesman Cho Hee-yong as saying.

South Korean Foreign Minister Song Min-soon sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice Tuesday night, expressing condolences and sympathy for the victims, the ministry said, according to AP.

The shootings had already been headline news in the country, which sends more students to the United States than any other country in the world -- more than 90,000, according to the U.S. embassy in Seoul.

But many South Koreans woke up Wednesday to the new revelation that the Virginia Tech shooter is in fact South Korean-born and lived in Seoul until he was eight years old.

"The Killer is a One-Point-Five Generation Korean," one front-page headline said, a Korean reference to the fact the shooter was a Korean national whose parents took him to the United States to grow up.

The Cho family had lived in a basement apartment in a small Seoul neighborhood, one local paper reported. The apartment is known as a "half basement" because it is half-underground and half-above ground and is generally the cheapest apartment in South Korean buildings.

A CNN producer went to the apartment in Seoul's Chang-dong neighborhood, discovering a mix of lower-middle class apartments and stores.

When Cho Seung-Hui was eight, the family emigrated to the United States because they were having a hard time making a decent living in South Korea, the building owner told the Korean-language paper Chosun Ilbo.

"When they went to the U.S., Cho's father said it was difficult living here, and living in a strange place would be better," the building owner was quoted as saying.

One Seoul resident told CNN's Sohn Jie-Ae that the South Korea connection was all her bank office was talking about.

"I was so surprised when I heard the news, because they first said it was a Chinese citizen," the bank employee said.

"It's a tragic incident. But to find out that he is a Korean, I am ashamed and confused," a shipping-company employee said. "I keep asking myself what would have made him do such a thing. It's a very bad day."

An editorial in a local newspaper also expressed concern about a possible backlash against Koreans.

"Now we find out that the criminal behind the massacre is Korean. It is shocking," said the editorial in Seoul's Hankyoreh newspaper. "But we are also hoping that this incident does not create a reason to discriminate against Koreans or Asians."

[Rasputin]

Professor: Shooter's writing dripped with anger

Long before before Cho Seung-Hui's deadly shooting spree on the Virginia Tech campus, a professor was so concerned about his anger that she took him out of another instructor's class and taught him one-on-one.

The former chairwoman of Virginia Tech's English department, Lucinda Roy, said the anger Cho expressed in the fall 2005 creative writing course was palpable if not explicit.

Two of Cho's former roommates also described his behavior as unusual, saying that he had spoken of suicide and had stalked three women.
Authorities confirmed that Cho had been investigated last year for stalking a woman in person and by e-mail.

As disturbing details emerged about the resident alien from South Korea, students gathered by the thousands in the heart of their campus Tuesday night for a candlelight vigil.

The students and victims' relatives gathered on Tech's drill field, holding candles aloft against the chilly night. Though the vigil was primarily solemn, students broke out in chants -- "Hokies, Hokies, Hokies" -- in a show unity and determination.

Roy, meanwhile, said the writings by Cho, an English major, were disturbing enough that she went to police and other university officials to seek help.
"The threats seemed to be underneath the surface," she said. "They were not explicit, and that was the difficulty the police had."

His instructor and fellow students also found his behavior in class "inappropriate," Roy said.

"He was taking photographs of students without their permission, especially under the desk," she said.

But without a clear threat nothing could be done, and Roy made the decision to instruct him away from other students.

Police say Cho killed at least 30 people and wounded 17 others before killing himself in Norris Hall, an engineering classroom building, Monday.

According to a search warrant, police found a note in Norris Hall containing a bomb threat directed at engineering buildings on the campus.

Two other bomb threats received in recent weeks were also being investigated.
It's also believed the 23-year-old student killed two other people earlier that day in a dormitory on campus.

Virginia Tech Police Chief Wendell Flinchum said ballistics tests show that one of the two guns recovered at Norris Hall was used at the dorm.

'Big warning signs'
Ian MacFarlane, who said he had class with Cho, called two plays Cho wrote "very graphic" and "extremely disturbing."

MacFarlane provided a copy of the writings to AOL, where he is an employee.
"It was like something out of a nightmare," MacFarlane wrote in a blog.

"We students were talking to each other with serious worry about whether he could be a school shooter."

Cho's roommates, who asked to be identified only as Andy and John, said they suspected Cho was responsible when they first heard a description of the gunman.

In retrospect, Cho had exhibited "big warning signs," Andy said. But he was so quiet, the roommate said, "he was just like a shadow."

Cho spoke of suicide after police investigated his involvement with a female student, Andy said.

"I told the cops that. And they took him away to the counseling center for a night or two," the roommate said.

Cho paid $571 by credit card for a 9 mm Glock 19 pistol and 50 rounds of ammunition just over a month ago, the owner of Roanoke Firearms told CNN Tuesday.
He also used a .22-caliber Walther pistol in the attack, police said. The serial numbers had been filed off of the weapons.

Shooter's note
Cho did not leave a suicide note, according to Col. Steve Flaherty, superintendent of the Virginia State Police.

However, a government official told CNN that a note had been found indicating Cho showed anger against "rich kids." The official also said Cho had a history of mental illness but gave no details.

Authorities are still investigating whether Cho had any accomplices in planning or executing Monday's rampage, Flaherty said.

Cho, who moved to the United States at age 8, lived at the university's Harper Hall, Flinchum said.

"He was a loner, and we're having difficulty finding information about him," said Larry Hincker, associate vice president for university relations.

Details, however, were emerging about the victims and acts of heroism during the shooting spree.

Liviu Librescu, a 76-year-old engineering professor and Holocaust survivor, was killed while he barricaded his door and allowed his students to climb out of a second-story window, students said.

In another classroom, Zach Petkewicz and other students held a table against the door to keep Cho out. Petkewicz said Cho fired shots into the door but struck no one.

Student Kevin Sterne, an Eagle Scout, used a cord to tie a tourniquet around his leg after he was shot twice in the thigh. Doctors said he is in stable condition, one of 14 survivors still hospitalized.

At least two of those killed -- Erin Peterson and Reema Samaha -- attended Westfield High School in Chantilly, Virginia, where Cho had graduated in 2003.

University response questioned
Tuesday, after an emotional convocation service on campus attended by President Bush, Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine announced that at the university's request, he was appointing an independent panel to review Monday's tragedy.

However, Kaine said he wasn't interested in arguments about gun control.

"People who want to take this within 24 hours of the event and make it their political hobby horse to ride, I've got nothing but loathing for them," Kaine said.

As questions continued to arise about how police reacted to the first shooting at the dorm, university President Charles Steger defended the response, saying police believed it to be "a domestic fight, perhaps a murder-suicide" contained to one dorm room.

[Rasputin]

Breeding murderers

I am an American. Of the Iranian variety. I became an American largely because I wanted to be able to travel easier without having to apply for visas for everywhere (even little Jamaica wants a visa from Iranian tourists!) with my Islamic Republic of Iran passport. But having been educated by American’s in Iran and having lived most of my life in the U.S I have come to feel American. It is a hard time to feel proud of being an American but I still get the goose bumps when I read the Declaration of Independence or hear the Pledge of Allegiance even with the “Under God” part included. Even though I teach my students that by ‘Man’ the founding fathers meant just that (That women and slaves were not included as part of humanity deserving Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness.) I still find much common ground with the philosophical backbone of this Republic.

Of all American institutions I find the University the most redeeming. The University with its silent meritocracy and its embrace of minds regardless of the bodies they come in is a Utopian place -- what America could have been if it were not for her crippling racism and anti-intellectualism. The greatest people I have ever met, the people I most admire, are professors in these institutions.

When I had to leave Iran for the second time in my life two years ago I decided against moving back to the States. I knew that America would be the best place for me as a struggling writer whose language of expression is English. But I did not move back because of my children who were at the time in Junior High School. Even though my children are American and feel more so than I ever did, even though they had been educated in American-style schools where ever we lived, I knew that putting them in an American public school would be bad for the development of their character. When I read about the poor Korean student who went on a rampage in Virginia Tech I was sure that I had made the right decision two years ago. I have attended American schools and Universities and taught in them. The best years of my life were spent at Boston University. Where I learned to think, argue, teach and write. Where I learned that most important of skills so well taught at American institutions: analytical thinking.

But I have also attended and taught in the American Public Schools. The most horrible place for a young adolescent individual to grow. I remember attending Palo-Alto high school in 78-79. Now, anyone familiar with California schools system knows that Palo-Alto is one of the best high schools in the system. But for a foreign student, at the time, it was a vast, cold and unwelcoming place. Immediately you were branded. You were categorized for life as a jock or a druggie or nerd. And one category excluded the other more harshly and decisively than the Hindu caste system. There was no way to be all three. Or even a combination of two. No way to move from one caste to another. There were other categories which were more fluid but divisive none-the-less. There were the punks (at the time they were kind of like Goths are now) there where the rich “it” people who drove the fancier cars and partied with each other in their parents Jacuzzis, there were the rockers who listened to Black Sabbath and those hippies who listened to Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. The two groups never mixed. There were also those who were into disco who were in turn shunned by the two rocker groups and the punks. Then there were the foreign nerds who were treated as non-existent or as anomalous presences no one really understood. What was lacking, compared to schools in other places or even private schools I had attended in America, was kindness and acceptance of the new and the different: those who did not easily fit the cliques that give these schools their social make-up. The American High School is too big, too cold too ostracizing for any kid with a modicum of sensitivity to bloom. In the American High School you are labeled quickly and for life.

That is why I did not want my children to attend a public school in the U.S. I did not want them to be labeled so early in their lives. I did not want them to be exposed to the cut-throat and cold judgment of peers who seem to have seen little love and who define themselves in terms conjured up by Procter& Gamble product placement experts.

My children spent two years in a Maryland public elementary school. There, they learned that their beautiful names could be perverted into little belittling jokes. There, in the first grade my daughter first noticed her skin color when a little blond boy called her dirty and brown. I did some substitute teaching in that school system to busy myself and be near my kids. In the schools nearer bigger towns we had to have policemen patrolling.

As a teacher you felt constantly threatened, in a physical way, by the students. This happened to me twice in an eight grade History class. I may have felt it more as a substitute teacher but believe me the teachers in these schools looked like badly armed soldiers in the trenches of a war that is bound to be lost. One can not want her kids to grow up in these institutions that are devoid of any philosophy where fear reigns and were kids will get A’s as long as they don’t offend the teacher on a daily basis. Out of these schools came the abusers of Abu Ghuraib. The murderers of Columbine. Out of these schools came this angry Korean at Virginia Tech.

I do still believe in the American University and hope my kids will be able to benefit from it as I did. But what amazed me and made me rather sick to my stomach was the incredibly a-political nature of the ceremony at Virgina Tech. No one at that convocation they had, which looked more like a football rally than a memorial service for the tragically murdered, mentioned anything about gun laws! This kid wrote essays describing gruesome murders, this kid had a history of scary, anti-social behavior and instead of being watched, advised and helped he was simply ignored, drugged, marginalized and given two guns. Why is it that American’s don’t know how to mourn? Why do all these events regardless of the degree of seriousness that caused them look like football rallies!

No one at that rally asked the question why such a disturbed boy with a history of depression, indeed on anti-depressants, was sold two guns in Virginia easier than an 18 year old can buy a beer in California! No one booed Bush who is responsible for more deaths of innocents in Baghdad every single day and supports the NRA. No instead of showing anger or remorse they had a pep talk about being the ‘future.’ Chanting like you would at a football match. Sometimes one can’t help thinking that if American’s were a little less ‘positive’, confident and gung-ho and more introspective and humble the world, especially America herself would be a better place to raise kids. If these poor kids and what happened to them on a spring day on the campus of a great university represent the future I am not so sure I want to be here to see it!

[Rasputin]

Blacksburg to Kunduz

I remember the feeling of the world falling and crashing all around me, like the very bodies of concrete, humans and steel falling from the Towers, as I ran, hysterical, into the principal’s office to call my brother, to know that he was okay. My insides still twist upon themselves when I relive the bona fide terror of hearing that busy signal sounding over and over again, instead of his voice. I returned my parent’s call yesterday, letting them know that my cousin goes to UVA, not Virginia Tech.

It stands at 33 dead, a sunny day on a pretty American campus. That doesn’t sound right. That body count sounds like it came out of an afternoon in Baghdad, or some dusty village in Afghanistan, like yesterday’s 9 dead and 25 wounded in the town of Kunduz, located on the other side of the world. Kunduz is business as usual to us, but Blacksburg: closer to home, personal, real, and, though it should no longer be so, unexpected.

What of this young student, not a year older than I, who shot close to 50 people yesterday without a word? I suspect now that we know his name and where he is from, we feel more comfortable with giving expression to our outrage, and have quickly forgotten about acknowledging our shame.

The headlines have already honed in on the shooter’s South Korean citizenship. Already our news outlets are bringing up the fact that liberal, foreign media and persons send condolences to us, but also criticism for elements of our governance and culture that make such atrocities not just possible, but predictable. How sad that in today’s day and age, the most telling voices of criticism, whether from Colorado or the Corriere della Sera, are so often written off as un-American.

Never mind the fact that Cho Seung-Hui had lived 15 of his 23 years -- the majority of his life and all of his formative adolescence and young adulthood, the ages when people are most likely to go shoot up a school -- in the United States, in Centreville, Virginia, home of the Wildcats. Never mind that these incidents have happened all but annually, in our country, for several years running now, and we have still not learned the lessons we needed to learn after Columbine.

Please, let us not fool ourselves again. If we want answers or can dare even to dream of real solutions, we cannot again take the luxury of forgoing self-reflection and instead place foreign names, faces and faiths into the dossier of our own tragedy, as we have (with plenty of encouragement from our media and a great number of our leaders) grown content with doing in the past few years.

Today and the day after will fail to deliver the quick, matter-of-fact answer that we busy and impassive Americans have come to expect from our media. As school shooting incidents have occurred with increasing regularity (and less coverage) over the past few years, we have, as with other tragedies and setbacks, failed to maintain a national dialogue that seriously attempts to generate reflection and build understanding of this now established, very American phenomenon, which continues to periodically outdo itself both in sheer scale and callousness.

So quick to punish kids rather than reach out to them, so quick to wage new wars abroad than to fight the old battles at home, to protect access to guns rather than keep them out of the hands of our youth, our government, as well as our society, have gone to great lengths to look past the mirror when identifying our perceived problems and priorities. As a nation, we are being encouraged to turn away from the realities glaring right at us, and are fast losing the ability to recognize and address our own contradictions, injustices, and shortcomings. Is it any surprise that we remain complacent in the face of the lies, rhetoric, and hubris of an administration that truly operates as if it is above the law, when doing otherwise would entail us owning up to our own sense of entitlement to lethargy, hypocrisy, and ignorance?

For me, the aftermath of September 11, the continuous, gory inertia of the wars, and the archetype that recurred yesterday, April 16 at VA Tech, do not have stem from the same cause per se. They share the same place, however, in representing the failure of a society -- drowning in anger, fear, and, most ignominiously, unshakeable complacence and apathy -- to seriously self-reflect. These events are among the many symptoms of a society that does not demand accountability from a government more concerned with the profit margins of arms industries than with the safety of its citizens, a government that makes blue and green and yellow alerts but can never seem to make peace or tend to its own citizens in New Orleans, a government which just outside the nation’s capitol allows 18-year-olds to buy handguns without a background check, safety training, or registration with the police, and lets 13-year-olds buy shotguns without parental permission.

Tom Mauser, national gun control advocate and father of slain 15-year-old Daniel Mauser of Columbine High School, said yesterday: “I am not going to just say gun laws are going to take care of this.” I agree; I think that we really need to think about how violence has become the language and mode of operation of America, how we violently confront all problems in our society through wars: wars on drugs, terror, poverty, lack of healthcare, tardiness, carb-heavy sandwiches. We need to think about how easy it is for someone to gather the tools and justification to express himself violently in this country. Our so-called gun control laws, all but meaningless in Virginia and elsewhere, make it easy for a kid to kill. The legislation on Capitol Hill for modifying and liberalizing the rules and obligations of war and organized violence, as well as lessening accountability for such actions, is endless. It is the world that surrounds isolated individuals as much as it is the individuals themselves.

The current political and social language, culture and legal atmosphere of America needs events like this to be meaningful, not the other way around. It identifies with, legitimizes, draws upon, and perpetuates violence in all walks of life. It feeds the current worldview ubiquitous in our media, penal, and foreign policy today and shapes our children accordingly. That’s why people died yesterday. In the wake of the Towers, the soldiers that get shipped back in boxes every month, the untold masses of dead in Iraq, Afghanistan, Columbine High School, the inner cities, the suburbs, and everywhere else this culture of bloodshed plays out, we need to see why violence is not the answer but rather the cause of our problems. If we cannot see the connections between these events, then school shootings acts of terrorism are bound to happen again, each incident larger and less shocking than the previous.

For the nearly 50 victims in Virginia; for my brother’s childhood friend, who died in a place where he shouldn’t have been in the first place; for my friend, who is there now for the second time when the first time was not justified; for every American who is dying without reason, or fighting for their lives in places infinitely distant from where the real problem is taking place, we need to stop the manufacture of violence, which we tolerate and consume and are absolutely a part of, that is both physically and spiritually consuming our youth.

There is so much to be done, and so much we can do now. We have to take guns out of the hands of teenagers and even young adults up to a certain age, in such a manner that allows for more effective and age-appropriate interventions. To give someone the legal right to own a weapon that is made for killing other people, before we give them the right to down a beer at a local bar, speaks for itself in terms of its absurdity. We can accomplish this first by electing local, state and national representatives who espouse this agenda, as well as removing the ubiquitous violence from our daily lives by electing people who will get us out of places like Iraq, where we don’t belong, keep us out of places like Iran, and take waging and financing wars and warfare off the national agenda.

This is saying nothing of other issues that also justify such monumental violence, like the raping over of our environment for our economy, the building of more nukes for our security, and institutionalized racism towards Middle Easterners, Muslims, and people who resemble them in one superficial way or another, which we do so that we can avoid blaming ourselves.

Most importantly, what we can do right now is to become sensitized. We should feel ashamed. We should feel disgusted, we should feel responsible for every bullet that flew two days ago in Blacksburg, because we are. And we need to question the very ambient noise that has lulled us into forgetting how pathological the state of our union, and the world it has helped to create, is at this point. Trademarks of the language and philosophy of legitimized violence, such as collateral damage, the price of freedom, sacrifice, preemption, terror, terrorism, terrorist, protect our borders, need to be identified, and the use of such loaded terms must be questioned and scrutinized EVERY time they are spoken to us or written in our local paper. Let us learn the lessons that our nation’s students die trying to teach us every year. These are a few humble ways in which we can truly honor our dead, from Blacksburg to Kunduz.

[Rasputin]

Source: Gunman angry at 'rich kids'

The gunman in Monday's massacre at Virginia Tech was Cho Seung-Hui, a 23-year-old senior English major from Centreville, Virginia, Virginia Tech Police Chief Wendell Flinchum said Tuesday.

A government official told CNN's Jeanne Meserve that a note has been found indicating Cho showed anger against "rich kids."

The official also said Cho had a history of mental illness but gave no details.
Cho left a note in his dorm in which he railed against "rich kids," "debauchery" and "deceitful charlatans" on the Virginia Tech campus, The Associated Press reported.

The Chicago Tribune, citing unidentified sources, reported that Cho may have been taking medication to combat depression and that his recent behavior was troubling, including setting a fire in a dorm and stalking women.
Draft scripts for two plays allegedly written by Cho for a writing class contain "really twisted, macabre violence," according to a student who was in class with him at Virginia Tech.

Ian MacFarlane, now an AOL employee, describes the writing as "very graphic" and "extremely disturbing."

The writings were provided to CNN by AOL. The employee also wrote a blog to accompany the two scripts.
MacFarlane said in the blog that when the class read Cho's work, "it was like something out of a nightmare."

"The plays had really twisted, macabre violence that used weapons I wouldn't have even thought of. Before Cho got to class that day, we students were talking to each other with serious worry about whether he could be a school shooter."
MacFarlane said Cho was extremely quiet, and efforts by other students to draw him out were rebuffed.

Cho took his own life as police closed in on him, according to Col. Steve Flaherty, Virginia State Police superintendent. Thirty other bodies were found in Norris Hall along with Cho, officials said.

Two people were killed earlier Monday in a college dormitory.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said that Cho was a legal permanent resident and had a green card. According to the Department of Homeland Security, Cho emigrated from South Korea when he was 8.

He lived in a Virginia Tech dormitory, but not in West Ambler Johnston Hall, where the first of Monday's shootings took place, university officials said.

On Tuesday, the mail carrier who has been delivering mail to Cho's parents since they moved to the subdivision described his father, Cho Sung-tae, 61, and his mother, Cho Hyang-ai, 51, as "super nice." He said he never met their son.

"I only met them [parents] when they were home, and I had packages to deliver to them ... but every time I did see them, they were super nice," Rod Wells said.

"It's just breaking my heart," he added. "No parent deserves that."

No one was home at the white, two-story townhouse residence Tuesday.

Virginia Tech senior Shane Moore said Tuesday he recalled having lunch with Cho three years ago.

Moore said his former roommate knew Cho because the two went to the same high school. Moore and his roommate approached Cho and asked if he would like to sit with them. Cho agreed but didn't say a word during lunch.

Finally, Moore's roommate cracked a joke and Cho laughed. Moore didn't take offense to Cho's silence.

"He just seemed real, real shy," Moore said. "He was quiet, nothing too unusual."

Students in one of Cho's classes called him "the question mark kid," classmate Julie Poole told the AP, because Cho used just a question mark for his name on a class sign-in sheet.

Fairfax County Schools in Virginia issued a statement Tuesday saying Cho graduated from Westfield High School in Chantilly, Virginia, in 2003. Two of Cho's victims also attended the school. The school's Web site describes it as an "honors" high school.

Court records obtained by the AP show Cho got a speeding ticket from Virginia Tech police on April 7. He was cited for going 44 mph in a 25 mph zone, the AP reported, with a court date set for May 23.