The shooter

The Chicago Sun-Times says the man who carried out the Virginia Tech massacre only arrived in the country last year:

Authorities were investigating whether the gunman who killed 32 people on the Virginia Tech campus in the deadliest shooting rampage in U.S. history was a Chinese man who arrived in the United States last year on a student visa. [The answer appears to be "no" - see update below. - DP]

The 24-year-old man arrived in San Francisco on United Airlines on Aug. 7 on a visa issued in Shanghai, the source said. Investigators have not linked him to any terrorist groups, the source said.

Police believe three bomb threats on the campus last week may have been attempts by the man to test the campus’ security response, the source said.

The exits to the buildings where the shootings occurred were chained by the shooter, the source said.

Bryan Preston postulates that the killer obtained his weapons illegally. Meanwhile, a major controversy is brewing over the delay between the first shooting and the warning to students issued by university administrators:

The first shooting was reported at 7:15 a.m. in a dormitory, West Ambler Johnston Hall, where police found two people fatally wounded. But the first e-mail message from the Virginia Tech administration to students did not go out until more than two hours later, at 9:26 a.m., stating that a shooting had occurred but with no mention of staying indoors or staying off campus or canceling classes.

About 9:45, the shootings began in Norris Hall, a classroom building at the other end of the sprawling campus. Police said the gunman killed 30 people at Norris and wounded about 30 before killing himself.

"I don't know why they let people stay in classrooms," said Sean Glennon, a junior from Centreville and the quarterback on the Hokies football team. "A lot of people are angry that campus wasn't evacuated a little earlier."

The university president and campus police chief said they decided not to cancel classes after the first shootings because the initial indication at the dorm, based on interviews with witnesses, was that the attack might have been a domestic-violence incident and that the shooter probably had fled the campus.

"We were acting on the best information we had at the time," said Wendell Flinchum, the campus police chief. "We felt that this incident was isolated to that dormitory."

University President Charles W. Steger said officials also were unsure what the alternative would be to allowing classes to proceed. More than 14,000 of the university's 26,000 full-time students live off campus, and, with some classes starting at 8 a.m., many of them were en route when officials were having to decide, he said. The university and police decided that students would be safer in their classrooms than milling around the campus or in their dorms, he said.

Damian P.

Update: the CBC has already featured Elliott Layton blaming it on Bush and the Iraq war. Because no mass shootings ever occurred in the 1990s, of course. (Actually, Columbine was caused by the NATO bombing of Serbia, at least according to Bowling for Columbine.)

If media reports about the killer's nationality turn out to be correct, will Layton blame the butchers of Tiananmen Square for the VT massacre? I'm not holding my breath on that one. (Who will be the first to say "racism" made him do it?)

Update II: ABC News says the shooter was a Korean national who had permanent residency status in the United States:

Cho Hui Seung, a resident alien of the United States, a South Korean national and a Virginia Tech senior has been identified as the gunman in the shootings that left 33 people dead on the Virginia Tech campus Monday, ABC News has learned.

[...]

Cho's identitiy has been confirmed with a positive fingerprint match on the guns used in the rampage and with immigration materials. It is believed that he was the shooter in both incidents yesterday. Sources say Cho was carrying a backpack that contained receipts for a March purchase of a Glock 9 mm pistol, sources said. Witnesses had also told authorities that the shooter was carrying a backpack. Sections of chain similar to those used to lock the main doors at Norris Hall, the site of the second shooting that left 31 dead, were found inside a Virginia Tech dormitory, sources confirmed to ABC News.

Bryan Preston's post, linked above, has what purports to be a message from the gun shop owner who sold Cho his weapons. I suspect we'll find out much more about this in the coming days. (If the shooter obtained his weapons legally after all, that considerably deflates the argument that gun policy isn't relevant to this horrible crime.)

Posted by damian at April 17, 2007 07:18 AM