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Peter
Read and other parents of the victims also urged television
stations to stop broadcasting the hate-filled videos
of Cho, the 23-year-old English major who carried out
the killings, and several networks agreed to scale back.
"We
want the world to know and celebrate our children's
lives, and we believe that's the central element that
brings hope in the midst of great tragedy," said
Read, who lost his 19-year-old daughter, Mary Karen
Read. "These kids were the best that their generation
has to offer."
As
families mourned and began burying the victims, investigators
worked on the evidence and looked into the warning signs
in Cho's past, including two stalking complaints against
him and a psychiatric hospital visit in which he was
found to be a danger to himself.
Police
filed a search warrant for a laptop and cell phone used
by one of the first victims, Emily Hilscher, who was
shot in a dormitory.
"The
computer would be one way the suspect could have communicated
with the victim," the warrant said, but it offered
no basis for a belief that Cho might have been in contact
with her.
Investigators
are "making some really great progress" into
determining how and why the shootings happened, Virginia
State Police spokeswoman Corinne Geller said Friday.
She said they hope to have something to tell the public
next week.
The
governor also appointed an independent panel that includes
former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge to look
into how authorities handled the tragedy.
Ridge
said Friday that the group would look into the time
lapse and how students were notified of the dangers,
and whether privacy laws and the need to communicate
for safety conflicted, among other things.
"This
was out-and-out murder," Ridge said. "This
was a horribly, horribly deranged young man."
At
a worship hall in State College, Pa., the family of
shooting victim Jeremy Herbstritt sat quietly as students
and staff lit candles Thursday and signed a condolence
banner about the graduate student. "We will remember"
read a large sign near the front.
Elsewhere,
private funeral ceremonies were held for Egyptian Waleed
Mohammed Shaalan and Partahi Mamora Halomoan Lumbantoruan
of Indonesia. Engineering professor Liviu Librescu,
a Holocaust survivor whose family says tried to save
his students amid the shooting Monday, was buried in
Israel.
Cho's
videos, which were mailed to NBC the morning of the
killings, revealed a man angry at the world but offered
little explanation of why, other than rambling tirades
against rich kids, snobs and people who had wronged
him.
As
experts analyzed the disturbing materials, it became
increasingly clear that Cho was almost a classic case
of a school shooter: a painfully awkward, picked-on
young man who lashed out with methodical fury at a world
he believed was out to get him.
"In
virtually every regard, Cho is prototypical of mass
killers that I've studied in the past 25 years,"
said Northeastern University criminal justice professor
James Alan Fox, co-author of 16 books on crime. "That
doesn't mean, however, that one could have predicted
his rampage."
When
criminologists and psychologists look at mass murders,
Cho fits the themes they see repeatedly: a friendless
figure, someone who has been bullied, someone who blames
others and is bent on revenge, a careful planner, a
male. And someone who saw warning signs in his strange
behavior long in advance.
Among
other things, the South Korean immigrant was sent to
a psychiatric hospital and pronounced an imminent danger
to himself. He was accused of stalking two women and
photographing female students in class with his cell
phone. And his violence-filled writings were so disturbing
he was removed from one class, and professors begged
him to get counseling.
Cho
rarely looked anyone in the eye and did not even talk
to his own roommates.
He
described himself in his video diatribe as a persecuted
figure like Jesus Christ. Cho, who came to the U.S.
at about age 8 in 1992 and whose parents worked at a
dry cleaners in suburban Washington, also ranted against
rich "brats" with Mercedes, gold necklaces,
cognac and trust funds.
Classmates
in Virginia, where Cho grew up, said he was teased and
picked on, apparently because of shyness and his strange,
mumbly way of speaking.
Once,
in English class at Westfield High School in Chantilly,
Va., when the teacher had the students read aloud, Cho
looked down when it was his turn, said Chris Davids,
a Virginia Tech senior and high school classmate. After
the teacher threatened him with an F for participation,
Cho began reading in a strange, deep voice that sounded
"like he had something in his mouth," Davids
said.
"The
whole class started laughing and pointing and saying,
`Go back to China,'" Davids said.
Cho's
great-aunt, who lives in South Korea, said Thursday
that because he did not speak much as a child and after
the family emigrated to the United States, doctors thought
he might be autistic.
"Normally
sons and mothers talk. There was none of that for them.
He was very cold," Kim Yang-soon told AP Television
News. "When they went to the United States, they
told them it was autism."
Neither
school officials, who have his educational records,
nor police who have his medical records, have mentioned
such a diagnosis. Autistic individuals often have difficulty
communicating, but such a diagnosis would not necessarily
explain his violence.
Regan
Wilder, 21, who attended Virginia Tech, high school
and middle school with Cho, said she was sure Cho probably
was picked on in middle school, but so was everyone
else. And it didn't seem as if English was the problem
for him, she said. If he didn't speak English well,
there were several other Korean students he could have
reached out to for friendship, but he didn't.
A
2002 federal study on common characteristics of school
shooters found that 71 percent of them "felt bullied,
persecuted or injured by others prior to the attack."
Cho
"would almost be a poster child for the pattern
that we saw," said Marisa Randazzo, the former
chief research psychologist at the U.S. Secret Service
and co-author of the study, conducted jointly with the
Education Department.
Among
the victims of the Virginia Tech massacre were two other
Westfield High graduates, Reema Samaha and Erin Peterson.
Both young women graduated from the high school last
year, but police said it is not clear whether Cho singled
them out.
Another
expert who has worked with mentally disturbed young
criminals suggested that Cho's actions probably had
genetic causes.
"This
is very different" from someone who was bullied
to the breaking point — Cho was clearly psychotic
and delusional, said Dr. Louis Kraus, chief of child
and adolescent psychiatry at Chicago's Rush University
Medical Center.
"This
type of mental illness that this poor man had was not
something that was likely precipitated by teasing or
bullying," he said. More likely, he said, is that
Cho had a biological psychiatric disorder that may have
worsened in recent years because of the pressures of
college life and his leaving the support of his family.
Fox,
the criminologist, said Cho probably made the decision
to go on a killing spree months ago based on his weapon
purchase. That would explain why witnesses described
him as remarkably calm when he did the shooting.
"There's
a lot of scripting that's going on in their heads, a
lot of planning. Once they've decided it, there's a
certain degree of comfort and satisfaction that they'll
be the last to laugh," Fox said.
Fox
said there is typically a precipitating event that sets
a gunman off. It is not yet known what that was in Cho's
case.
"It
may not be huge" to normal people, but to Cho "it
was the final straw that broke the camel's back,"
Fox said.
Associated
Press writers Bob Lewis in Richmond, Va., Sarah Karush
and Seth Borenstein in Washington; Sharon Cohen and
Lindsey Tanner in Chicago; Vicki Smith in Blacksburg;
and Genaro C. Armas in State College, Pa., contributed
to this report.
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