Virginia Tech gunman described as 'loner'

BLACKSBURG, Va. – His classmates knew him only as “the question mark kid.”\nOn the first day of class last year, when everyone introduced himself, Cho Seung-Hui sat sullenly in the back of the room and refused to speak. On the sign-in sheet, he had put only a question mark for his name.\nEveryone knew Cho’s name Tuesday after he was identified as the gunman in the worst shooting rampage in modern U.S. history, but his reason remained a question mark.\n“He was a loner, and we’re having difficulty finding information about him,” school spokesman Larry Hincker said.\nWhat was emerging was a chilling portrait of a 23-year-old loner who alarmed his professors with twisted creative writing and left a rambling note in his dorm room raging against women and rich kids.\nEven when authorities identified him in connection with the shooting that killed 33 people, including Cho, some classmates in the close-knit English department didn’t know for sure who he was until they saw his photograph. News reports said he might have been taking medication for depression and that he was becoming increasingly violent and erratic.\nA student who attended Virginia Tech last fall provided obscenity- and violence-laced screenplays that he said Cho wrote as part of a playwriting class. One was about a fight between a stepson and his stepfather, and involved throwing of hammers and attacks with a chainsaw. \n “We always joked we were just waiting for him to do something, waiting to hear about something he did,” said another classmate, Stephanie Derry. “But when I got the call it was Cho who had done this, I started crying, bawling.”\nProfessor Carolyn Rude, chairwoman of the university’s English department, said Cho’s writing was so disturbing that he had been referred to the university’s counseling service.\n“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,” Rude said. “But we’re all alert to not ignore things like this.”\nCho, who came to the United States from South Korea in 1992 and was raised in suburban Washington, D.C., where his parents worked at a dry cleaners, left a note in his dorm room that was found after the bloodbath.\nA government official, who spoke of condition of anonymity because he had not been authorized to discuss details of the case, said the note had been described to him as “anti-woman, anti-rich kid.”\nMonday’s rampage consisted of two attacks, more than two hours apart – first at a dormitory, where two people were killed, then inside a classroom building, where 31 people, including Cho, died. Two handguns – a 9 mm and a .22-caliber – were found in the classroom building.\nThe Washington Post quoted law enforcement sources as saying Cho died with the words “Ismail Ax” in red ink on one of his arms, but they were not sure what that meant.\nAccording to court papers, police found a “bomb threat” note – directed at engineering school buildings – near the victims in the classroom building. In the past three weeks, Virginia Tech was hit with two other bomb threats, but investigators have not connected those earlier threats to Cho.\nCho graduated from Westfield High School in Chantilly, Va., in 2003. His family lived in an off-white, two-story townhouse in Centreville, Va.\nAt least one of those killed in the rampage, Reema Samaha, graduated from Westfield High in 2006. But there was no immediate word from authorities on whether Cho knew the young woman and singled her out.\nOne law enforcement official said Cho’s backpack contained a receipt for a March purchase of a Glock 9 mm pistol. Cho held a green card, meaning he was a legal, permanent resident. That meant he was eligible to buy a handgun unless he had been convicted of a felony.\nRoanoke Firearms owner John Markell said his shop sold the Glock and a box of practice ammo to Cho 36 days ago for $571.\n“He was a nice, clean-cut college kid. We won’t sell a gun if we have any idea at all that a purchase is suspicious,” Markell said.\nInvestigators stopped short of saying Cho carried out both attacks, although state police ballistics tests showed one gun was used in both. Two law enforcement officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because the information had not been announced, also said Cho’s fingerprints were on both guns, whose serial numbers had been filed off.