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Cho’s message from the grave Two days after a massacre on the campus of Virginia Tech NBC received a package mailed by the shooter, 23-year-old Cho Seung-hui, in which he said in a videotaped message that he had been “forced into a corner.” On the morning of April 16, Cho mailed the package from Blacksburg, 350 miles southwest of Washington, DC, after shooting two persons at the West Ambler Johnston Hall dormitory. He then went to Norris Hall where he shot the remaining victims. Virginia Tech president Charles Steger said the police believed the first shooting was “a domestic fight, perhaps a murder-suicide” that was contained to one dorm. “I don’t think anyone could have predicted that another event was going to take place two hours later,” he said. In his message Cho said, “You had a hundred billion chances and ways to have avoided today... But you decided to spill my blood. You forced me into a corner and gave me only one option. The decision was yours. Now you have blood on your hands that will never wash off.” He railed against the rich saying, “You had everything you wanted. Your Mercedes wasn’t enough, you brats. Your golden necklaces weren’t enough, you snobs. Your trust fund wasn’t enough. Your vodka and cognac weren’t enough. All your debaucheries weren’t enough. Those weren’t enough to fulfil your hedonistic needs. You had everything.” The eerie package also include several photographs of Cho posing and pointing handguns at the camera. Cho’s roommate Karan Grewal recalled in an interview with CNN
that the young man seldom showed any emotion. “He was a shy guy,” Grewal said. His professors and classmates describe him as a “mean” and “creepy” man who wrote horrific plays depicting graphic violence and stalked women. The killings have reopened debate in the USA on the need for stricter gun laws. Two Indians — Dr. G.V. Loganathan, a professor of civil and environmental engineering, and Minal Panchal, a masters’ student in building sciences — were killed on Monday. Virginia Tech’s Indian student population — roughly 600 — has rallied in support of the victims’ families. Ajitpal Singh Raina, a masters’ student in industrial and systems engineering, heads the university’s Indian Students Association. “Minal was one of our friends,” Raina said. The Indian Embassy dispatched two senior officials — ministers for consular affairs and community outreach, Krishan Varma and Anil K. Gupta - to the campus. They met more than a 100 Indian students on Tuesday and offered any kind of help. They also met the families of Panchal and Loganathan. Members of Loganathan’s family were being provided passports and visas and the government of Tamil Nadu had agreed to pay their airfare to the USA. Noting that only the embassy and the MEA were equipped to deal with the extensive paperwork required to transport a body back to India, an embassy spokesman said the families had not yet indicated if they wanted to take the bodies back. Raina sought to reassure the families of Indian students in India saying the incident was an isolated one and that the campus was “extremely safe.”
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