Foehammer’s Anvil

Now tell me heads aren’t going to roll over this incident. When laws aren’t enforced, innocent people die.
From the AP:

Between his first and second bursts of gunfire, the Virginia Tech gunman mailed a package to NBC News containing what authorities said were images of him brandishing weapons and a video of him delivering a diatribe about getting even with rich people.

“This may be a very new, critical component of this investigation. We’re in the process right now of attempting to analyze and evaluate its worth,” said Col. Steve Flaherty, superintendent of Virginia State Police. He gave no details on the material.

NBC said that a time stamp on the package indicated the material was mailed in the two-hour window between the first burst of gunfire in a high-rise dormitory and the second fusillade, at a classroom building. Thirty-three people died in the rampage, including the gunman, 23-year-old student Cho Seung-Hui, who committed suicide.

The package included digital images of him holding weapons and a manifesto that “rants against rich people and warns that he wants to get even,” according to a law enforcement official who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the case.

MSNBC said that the package included a CD-ROM on which Cho read his manifesto.

“NBC Nightly News” planned to show some of the material Wednesday night, MSNBC reported.

NBC said it immediately turned the package over to authorities on Wednesday. The package was sent to NBC News head Steve Capus.

If the package was indeed mailed between the first attack and the second, that would help explain where Cho was and what he did during that two-hour window.

And to top things off, Seung-Hui was declared a danger to himself and others back in 2005. From Reuters:

The gunman who went on a deadly rampage at Virginia Tech had been accused of stalking women students and was taken to a psychiatric hospital in 2005 because of worries he was suicidal, university police said on Wednesday.

The new details added to an already chilling portrait of Cho Seung-Hui, a 23-year-old student from
South Korea who massacred 32 people and then took his own life on Monday in the bloodiest shooting spree in modern U.S. history.

Still grieving for the victims, students and teachers have described a sullen loner whose creative writings for his English literature degree were so laced with violence and venom that they alarmed some of those around him.

University Police Chief Wendell Flinchum said his officers confronted Cho in late 2005 after two women complained separately that he had harassed them in person, through phone calls and with instant messages.

“I’m not saying they were threats; I’m saying they were annoying,” Flinchum told a news conference at the sprawling rural campus in southwestern Virginia.

After the second incident in December 2005, Cho’s roommate warned police he might be suicidal, prompting them to issue a “temporary detention order” and send him to a nearby mental health facility for evaluation, Flinchum said.

Officials would not say how long Cho stayed at the facility, but roommates said he was gone for a couple of days. The women declined to file charges against Cho. Neither was among his victims on Monday, police said.

Despite encounters with the law and his past psychiatric treatment, Cho was able to legally purchase the two handguns he used in the attack. The shooting has rekindled debate over U.S. gun laws, the most lenient in the Western world.

Call me crazy, pun intended, but it seems to me that the discussion should revolve around containing the mentally ill and keeping them the hell off of public property and especially college campuses and schools.

WARNING SIGNS?

News of Cho’s past contacts with police and mental health specialists added to accounts of his erratic behavior, raising questions whether anyone could have picked up warning signs.

One of his former teachers, poet Nikki Giovanni, said she had insisted Cho be removed from her class in 2005 because he intimidated other students by photographing them and writing obscene, violent poetry. “There was something mean about this boy,” she told CNN. “There was a real mean streak.”

Police were studying Cho’s writings for clues to a motive. In a search of his dormitory room, they seized a computer, a camera, books and notebooks, a warrant showed.

Cho, who immigrated to the United States with his family in 1992 and was raised in suburban Washington, D.C., chained doors shut to prevent escape and worked his way through classrooms, shooting his victims one by one. He stopped only to reload.

Police said the same gun was used in the shooting deaths of two people in a dormitory two hours earlier.

Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine said he would appoint W. Gerald Massengill, who headed the Virginia State Police during the September 11 attacks and the killing spree of a sniper pair in 2002, to head a panel to review the response to the shootings.

The probe was requested by the university, which has defended itself against criticism it waited too long after the first shooting in the dormitory to warn students of danger.

“I’m satisfied that the university did everything that they felt that they needed to in the heat of the moment … but you’ve just got to look at this in the cold light of day and ask those questions,” Kaine told CBS’ “Early Show.”

With the Virginia Tech campus still on edge, students got another scare on Wednesday when police swarmed into a building housing the university president’s office. But an initial report of suspicious activity turned out to be a false alarm.

Jitters also spread to several other college campuses around the United States. Fox News reported that a bomb threat had forced the evacuation of seven buildings at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.

Gie Kim, head of the Korean American Coalition’s Washington chapter, said Cho’s parents, who live in Centreville, Va., and have made no public comment on the shooting, were “still in the grieving process.”

“The perpetrator’s family is as much a victim as anybody else who lost a family member in this incident,” she said.

In Seoul, President Roh Moo-hyun said he and his fellow South Koreans felt “shock and a wrenching of our hearts” over the shooting. Some Korean officials feared a backlash against the large Korean community in the United States.

The perpetrator’s family is as much a victim? I swear, I just give up on some people. What ever happened to parental responsibility? This maniac should never have been loose on the streets and I’m willing to bet his family was glad he was far away at school. Don’t make them out to be victims like the poor innocents that just died. That is a disgustingly pandering attempt at equivalence, Gie Kim. I’m also willing to say that if that boy had been white or black and an American citizen, he’d have been dealt with far more harshly. I’d love to hear responses to that statement.

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