More details are coming out about the man responsible for the worst mass murder in American history, and it’s all sounding very familiar:
BLACKSBURG, Va. - A 23-year-old senior from South Korea whose creative writing was so disturbing that he was referred to the school?s counseling service was behind the massacre of 30 people locked inside a university classroom building in the deadliest shooting rampage in modern U.S. history, the university said Tuesday.
(…)
Professor Carolyn Rude, chairwoman of the university?s English department, said she did not personally know the gunman. But she said she spoke with Lucinda Roy, the department?s director of creative writing, who had Cho in one of her classes and described him as ?troubled.?
?There was some concern about him,? Rude told The Associated Press. ?Sometimes, in creative writing, people reveal things and you never know if it?s creative or if they?re describing things, if they?re imagining things or just how real it might be. But we?re all alert to not ignore things ike this.?
She said Cho was referred to the counseling service, but she said she did not know when or what the outcome was. Rude refused to release any of his writings or his grades, citing privacy laws.
NBC News? Pete Williams reported that police had found a note in which Cho listed ?random grievances,? but few other details were immediately available. That seemed in keeping for a young man who apparently left little impression in the Virginia Tech community.
Cho?s fellow residents of Harper Hall said few people knew the gunman, who kept to himself.
And the story seems to be the same in Centreville, where Cho grew up:
In Centreville, a suburb of Washington where Cho?s family lived in an off-white, two-story townhouse, people who knew Cho concurred that he kept to himself.
?He was very quiet, always by himself,? said Abdul Shash, a neighbor. 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.
Rod Wells, a postal worker, said that characterization of Cho did not fit the man?s parents, who, he described as ?always polite, always kind to me, very quiet, always smiling. Just sweet, sweet people.?
Obviously, the man was deeply disturbed on some fundamental level. I don’t mean to suggest that he was criminally insane or that, had he survived, he should have been excused from the punishment he so richly deserved.
It’s just that this incident reinforces something I’ve always felt.
Criminals like this aren’t “just like the rest of us”, they are evil on some fundamental level.
Tags: Virginia Tech
April 17th, 2007 at 2:56 pm
While I agree that they aren’t ‘just like the rest of us’, I must strongly disagree with the use of the term ‘evil’. Evil would imply that this young man lashed out with _malice_ toward his fellow man, deliberately seeking to harm others with no regard for justice. The very fact that there is a note citing reasons for this behavior indicates that this was not some random act of hate perpetrated by a non-human intellect. This young man clearly felt that society, or his classmates, or someone has wronged him enough that he had to do what he did. He wasn’t evil; unfortunately, he was also not sane.
April 17th, 2007 at 3:01 pm
Brandon,
He was armed with two guns and multiple rounds of ammunition. He chained shut the only route of escapes that people had. And he shot without concern for where the bullets landed.
If that’s not malice, I don’t know what is.
Personally, I think one of the things that is wrong with the world today is that people are afraid, or unwilling, or whatever, to call something evil when they clearly see that it is.
I feel sorry for the victims. I don’t feel sorry for this murderer.