30 Killed In Virgina Tech Shooting

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Where do you go to school, anyway? Don't you live in this area?

I don't know about that. The local talk radio was interviewing some people who were from UT and students at the school - they seemed to take issue with this statement. I guess the campus police thought that the first shootings were domestic violence and were treating the situation accordingly. If it really looked like a love triangle gone bad, I think they were probably appropriate. I don't think that investigators who stumble onto situations that look like this initial killing and immediately think that a mass murder is about to take place - and frankly, I don't know that I'd like to live in a society where such conclusions were immediately drawn when a couple is found dead.

Agreed.

And what's disturbing is that the gun lobby will now argue that a concealed carry holder could have stopped this guy. That's a laughable arguement - could you immagine the confusion and carnage that would result in?

No. I think that if the concealed holder was reasonably trained, a good shot, there at the time, and bold enough to do something, then yes, the shooter could have possibly - not probably, but possibly - been stopped. When it comes down to waiting for the shooter to run out of bullets - or people to shoot, whichever comes first - then action is a reasonable step. Remember the plane that crashed in a field on September 11th? Without the action taken by the people, it would have hit a heavily populated area, and even more would have died. Self sacrifice is, sadly, necessary at some times. Now obviously, tackling a man with a gun would probably not succeed, at least not without a good deal of luck. Someone else with a gun has a better chance. Or, as another alternative, the concealed holder could have potentially forced the gunman to move to a different part of the building just by firing back.

Besides, guns are easy to get ahold of now. It would not take much effort - not now, and probably not ever - to buy one illegally. Go out on the city streets, have some money change hands, and there's a gun for them. As Ragtime said, if they're willing to kill 33 people, they're not going to be bothered about gun control laws.

Some snippets about Cho Seung-Hui from an Associated Press article:

"Classmates said that on the first day of an introduction to British literature class last year, the 30 or so English students went around and introduced themselves. When it was Cho's turn, he didn't speak.

The professor looked at the sign-in sheet and, where everyone else had written their names, Cho had written a question mark. "Is your name, 'Question mark?'" classmate Julie Poole recalled the professor asking. The young man offered little response."

"Cho spent much of that class sitting in the back of the room, wearing a hat and seldom participating. In a small department, Cho distinguished himself for being anonymous. "He didn't reach out to anyone. He never talked," Poole said.

'"We just really knew him as the question mark kid," Poole said.'

'"He was very quiet, always by himself," neighbor Abdul Shash said. Shash said Cho spent a lot of his free time playing basketball and would not respond if someone greeted him. He described the family as quiet.'

Hm.

Here's another detail about him from MSN http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18148802/?GT1=9246

I dispute the idea that the university and police took the right action. It doesn't matter if the crime happened on or off campus, if there is reason to believe there is a loose suspect, then campuses (campii?) are closed and sealed off/lockdown. They do this with escaped felons, inmates and fleeing suspects. The fact that they didn't know where the suspect was at 7:15am meant they should have shut down the campus.
I think the nature of the original shooting (alleged domestic dispute) is irrelevant. It also suggests some amount of prejudice and dismissal of the severity of so-called domestic disputes. Two people were dead, shot and the suspect was dismissed as harmless. That's crap. The university is going to blame the cops and the cops will blame their training. But they each are to blame for not shutting the school down.

There's no need to dispute it. The university administration is definitely partly at fault here. We received e-mails (posted them here earlier, copies are now available on CNN) about the first shooting around 9:26, two hours after the first shooting, and less than half an hour before the second. Steger (the pompous ass of a president this university has, who is clearly trying to save his own ass here) claims that it was believed that the situation was isolated at West A.J. Well, if that's what he thought, if that's why he acted as he did, he thought wrong, and because of it people died.

Some of us here are looking into creating a petition to get him to resign from office.

If the police did not encourage action to be taken closing the university, they should have. I'm not trying to downplay their efforts at the second scene, but mistakes were made. Fatal mistakes. Because of it, many students and professors are dead, and the rest of us here are left reeling from it.

Last edited by shadexiii on 17 Apr 2007, 3:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.

ALL murder is reprehensible - I'm not saying that domestic violence victims deserve what they get. I'm not trying to minimize the effects of domestic violence. What I am saying is that it looked like the first two victims were targeted for the crime that took place. Statistically, most murder victims are NOT chosen at random - so I don't think it is reasonable to infer that someone who was willing to engage in murder to resolve a domestic dispute will go on to randomly shoot up classrooms and professor's offices.

The first two victims, one was an RA that supposedly tried to stop the domestic dispute. The other (this is hearsay) is thought to be possibly an ex-girlfriend of the shooter. At the least, someone he knew.

The RA, I knew him albeit not closely. Everything the news has said about him is dead-on. He was always cheerful when I saw him, always in an upbeat mood.

I never said that or "inferred" that. I maintain that in most, if not all, other violent crimes result in the campus being shut down. That this campus was not is based on the "belief" the shooting was the result of a domestic dispute.
It has nothing to do with making some kind of prophecy that he'll shoot randomly. It has to do with the fact that there was a loose gunman, a loose nutball that killed two people and was at least near the campus, if not on campus the whole time.
We don't believe a fleeing bank robber will shoot kids but we'll close a campus if he is near it. We don't close a school building when there is a bomb threat, we evacuate the whole school.
That is common practice.

The only seeming difference here is that the belief it was "only" a domestic dispute.

I find it distressing that on MSN.com the headline about the incident is a quote. "He was a loner" in really big text, as if that was the most important factor. Let's forget the fact that he was a highly disturbed and tormented individual. He killed those people becase that's what loners do.

I really, really hate the media. I've been getting crooked looks ever since that happened, as if that single shared trait of lonership was a dead indicator that I was going to do something similar.

Ah, and then the arguments. Always with the arguments after something like this. Argument after argument after argument until the deaths of human lives are forgotten and the incident is used as ammo for politicians and radical pseudo-intellectuals. Arguing about things like gun laws or mental illness seems disrespectful and stupid in the scope of things. Learn from the past, but don't overdo it. Mourn and move on.

Yeah in 2002 a person did stop a killer at a college.

http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?P ... 0917a.html

Like LadyCass said, I agree this is possible if the person is well enough trained and bold enough to engage the person who is shooting up the place.

When Trolley Square was shot up (that's the mall in Salt Lake City - and my husband was dining just down the street when this was going on - I'd stayed home because he was dining with our 94-yr-old neighbor and I had an ear infection that I didn't want to give her - that's a story for another time) I was following the events unfold on the local news pretty much minute by minute. An off-duty cop from Ogden, UT who had his service revolver - his name is Hammond did engage that shooter (Talovic) and probably saved lives by doing this. But, as a result, he caused pretty significant confusion at the scene. What happenned was that Hammond left his wife in a restaurant that got locked down and went to engage the shooter - Mrs. Hammond called 911 to inform the Salt Lake PD that Hammond was intending to shoot Talovic. They played her 911 tape on the local news.

From what's been said in the local media, there's not doubt in my mind that Hammond distracted Talovic away from other people that he could have been shooting. But Hammond could very easily have been killed. He had the presence of mind to be shouting "Off duty Ogden PD!" at the top of his lungs while engaging Talovic and while Salt Lake PD was coming on the scene. Salt Lake PD ultimately backed Talovic into Pottery Barn and killed him, contrary to some early rumors that Hammond had killed him. Hammond had added insurance by having his wife call 911 to tell Salt Lake PD that he was there and what he was doing. However, there were reports of a second shooter circulating well into the night as a result of this, and people stayed locked down for up to 5 hours AFTER Talovic was killed due to the confusion. Also, there have been rumors that Talovic was yelling "Allah Akhbar" (apparently Arabic for "God is great") due to some cell phone videos that were taken. It's actually Hammond yelling "Ogden PD".

Now in the great scheme of things, the confusion that was caused is minor. But if there were 5 concealed carry holders trying to shoot "the Trolley Square shooter" and they didn't know who was the vigilante concealed carry holder and who was the criminal, they could have ended up all shooting each other. In the confusion, the cops could have come in and shot whoever was left standing. Then the differing eyewitness accounts would have confused the issue even further, so the cops would be looking for 30 shooters. Then they'd have to figure out who was the mass murderer and who was the vigilante concealed carry holder before they could start an investigation. That would be a mess.

So, I don't doubt that someone with a gun could have at least distracted Cho. They could have gotten themselves killed. The cops could have also killed them - because they are pumped full of adrenaline and are thinking about how they have to neutralize an active shooter. No matter what, there is no "good" outcome for a situation like this.

Hindsight being 20/20, now that all the reports have been released about how disruptive he was in classes, and how he wrote these murder fantasies, I think that the administration of VA Tech made a mistake in not mandating some sort of counselling, asking him to leave for a semester to seek mental health treatment, or expelling him outright. It seems that one of his teachers complained and was told that none of these things were options. Based on what's been said about him - including some of his classmates talking about how they could envision him becoming a school shooter - I think that's a policy that the administration needs to seriously take a look at.

As for evacuating the building or school - I'm not talking about making a prophecy as to whether or not some nut will randomly shoot people after engaging in what appeared to be a domestic violence crime. Criminal behavior is studied pretty extensively, so the conclusion that the dorm shooting was an isolated incident would probably have been correct 999/1000 times. Now, whether or not a school has "standard operating proceedures" to deal with the other 999 times is another matter. Perhaps it would be reasonable to have a PA system on campus to evacuate non-essential personnel until the various buildings could be secured if there was reason to believe that a violent criminal was loose on campus. Perhaps it would be reasonable to allow students to register cell phone numbers for SMS messages during these types of circumstances. I honestly don't think that most college campuses have even considered this - I'm sort of wondering what U.C. Berkeley did when Tarasoff killed his girlfriend, since that's the only analagous dorm-related domestic violence killing that I can think of.

On a related note, several years ago someone was involved in a police standoff accross the street from my house. This was unusual in that I live in what is considered to be a pretty exclusive area. The house that was involved was vacant and for sale, so I sort of wonder if the person knew the homeowner - particularly since getting to my street is a dead end and you have to go through somewhat of a maze to get to it. Anyway, the K9 unit dogs initially woke me up when this was going on. It was about 2AM. Then a fire engine parked in front of my house and they left the motor running for hours. My husband called the sherrif's office to ask what the hell was going on. They replied that a "suspect" (suspected of what, I don't know to this day) was pursued into the area, barricaded herself into the house, and was threatening to shoot herself. So I think it's safe to assume that there was a gun in the house. The deputies did not once attempt to contact us to tell us what was going on. Perhaps this had to do with the time of day - I don't know. Had I needed to leave my house for whatever reason, I probably would have opened my garage and been a sitting duck. In fact, I was probably a sitting duck when I was watching the situation out of my window. It's never occurred to me that the cops should have notified me as to what was going on. Had a bullet gone into my house, I probably would feel differently. But I think the cops were managing the immediate threats and honestly did not believe there was danger to us - the lady in the house was their priority.

Cops do the best they can - they aren't psychic, but they have limited resources and need to allocate them to deal with the immediate threats. I'm really sorry that they were wrong. I don't think that people deserve to be fired for how they handled the actual shooting. Perhaps only for whether they handled a disturbed student appropriately in the time that led up to the shooting.

You're totally missing my point about how campuses are shut down during or following a crime. It doesn't matter what the odds are that a violent criminal is going to shoot someone else. These days it's protocol that when there is a suspect on the loose, they shut down the campus. They do this regardless of the crime, if it was violent and/or the guy is armed-that's enough.
It's done all over the country, as I said, with escaped convicts, inmates, fleeing criminals, etc. It had been done in this specific campus last August. So, it's a valid complaint that someone passed the buck and people weren't protected from a loose criminal. Someone made a decision that a domestic dispute (resulting in two deaths, one being a bystander) wasn't "bad enough" to warrant shutting down the school. It's a chilling message about what assumptions administrators and police have concerning domestic violence.

Obviously the situation at your house was different as they cops had the other house surrounded. If there are explosives involved, they most definitely would have evacuated the neighborhood. You should never stand gawking out your window when there is a police/emergency action. We turn out our lights, to discourage fleeing suspects/criminals from eyeing our yard.