The nation's deadliest shooting rampage was a South Korean student at Virginia Tech
BLACKSBURG, Va. — The person believed responsible for the nation's deadliest shooting rampage 橫衝直撞 was a South Korean student at Virginia Tech, campus police said Tuesday as the investigation continued into a massacre大屠殺 that claimed 33 lives.
The Virginia Tech Police Department identified the campus gunman as Cho Seung-Hui, 23, a student and native of South Korea. He was a senior in the English department, police said.
Cho has lived in the United States from a young age, South Korea's foreign ministry in Seoul said today in a statement. His parents live in Centreville, Va., about 25 miles west of Washington. They were not at home Tuesday.
Campus police also said one weapon was used in both shootings Monday — one at a campus building and one in a dormitory學生宿舍. A second weapon also was used at the campus building — Norris Hall — where at least 30 people were killed before Cho committed suicide, police said.
Two others were killed earlier Monday at the Ambler Johnston dormitories.
It is "certainly reasonable" to assume Cho was responsible for both Virginia Tech shootings, said Col. Steve Flaherty, superintendent 警察督察長 of the Virginia State Police. However, investigators have not yet ruled out the possibility another person could have been involved.
"The evidence has not led us to say with all certainty that the same shooter was involved in both instances," he told reporters.
The chaos at Norris has complicated the investigation there, he said. Victims were found in at least four classrooms and along a stairwell. Personal effects were strewn about, Flaherty said.
"What went on during that incident caused tremendous chaos and panic," he said.
The new information came as Virginia Tech began to try to recover from the rampage. A convocation 召集 is scheduled for this afternoon on campus. President Bush is among the tens of thousands expected to attend.
"The president and Mrs. Bush are going to Virginia Tech as representatives of the entire nation," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said.
Bush also directed that flags be flown at half-staff through Sunday evening in honor of the Virginia Tech victims.
The campus canceled all classes for the week. Norris Hall will be closed for the rest of the semester, Virginia Tech President Charles Steger said.
This morning, Steger again defended the response of the campus police in the shootings. The police were called to the Ambler Johnston dormitory shootings Monday and, after suspecting the shootings were part of a domestic dispute, decided not to lock down the Virginia Tech campus. The killings at Norris Hall came two hours later.
Steger noted that only 9,000 of the university's approximately 25,000 students live on campus, meaning that many of the rest — along with about 8,000 teachers and employees — were en route to the university Monday when the first shootings occurred. "We warned the students we thought were immediately impacted," he said on CNN, noting campus police closed off the area around the dormitory immediately after the shooting.
When pressed on CNN about whether Virginia Tech police "blew it," Steger responded, "I don't think it's fair at all" to characterize the situation that way.
The slayings殺害 left people of this once-peaceful mountain town and the university at its heart praying for the victims and struggling to find order in the face of horror that defies 蔑視 reason.
A mourner哀悼者 at a church service Monday night prayed "for parents near and far who wonder at a time like this, 'Is my child safe?"'
That question promises to haunt Blacksburg long after Monday's attacks. Investigators offered no motive.
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In addition to the deaths, at least 15 people were hurt in the second attack, some seriously. At least 12 remained hospitalized Tuesday, with three in critical condition. Many victims Monday found themselves trapped after someone, apparently the shooter, chained and locked Norris Hall doors from the inside.
Students jumped from windows, and students and faculty carried away some of the wounded without waiting for ambulances to arrive.
At an evening news conference, Police Chief Wendell Flinchum refused to dismiss the possibility that a co-conspirator or second shooter was involved. He said police had interviewed a male who was a "person of interest" in the dorm 宿舍 shooting and who knew one of the victims, but he declined to give details.
"I'm not saying there's a gunman on the loose," Flinchum said. Ballistics tests will help explain what happened, he said.
Some students bitterly complained they got no warning from the university until an e-mail that arrived more than two hours after the first shots.
"I think the university has blood on their hands because of their lack of action after the first incident," said Billy Bason, 18, who lives on the seventh floor of the dorm.
Steger said authorities believed the shooting at the dorm was a domestic dispute and mistakenly thought the gunman had fled the campus.
"We had no reason to suspect any other incident was going to occur," he said.
The massacre Monday took place almost eight years to the day after the Columbine High bloodbath near Littleton, Colo. On April 20, 1999, two teenagers killed 12 fellow students and a teacher before taking their own lives.
Previously, the deadliest shooting in U.S. history was in 1991 when in a man in a cafeteria in Killeen, Texas, shot 23 people to death and himself.
The deadliest campus shooting in U.S. history had been a rampage that took place in 1966 at the University of Texas at Austin, where Charles Whitman climbed the clock tower and opened fire with a rifle from the 28th-floor observation deck. He killed 16 people before he was shot to death by police.
Police said there had been bomb threats on campus over the past two weeks but that they had not determined whether they were linked to the shootings.
It was second time in less than a year that the campus was closed because of gunfire.
Contributing: The Associated Press; Donna Leinwand in Blacksburg, Va.; David Jackson in Washington; Randy Lilleston in McLean, Va.
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