Cho Seung Hui, the gunman who killed 32 people at Virginia Tech on Monday, was involved in two stalking incidents in 2005 and sent to a mental health clinic for evaluation, VT police chief Wendell Flinchum said in a news conference this morning.
Campus police knew about Cho's aggressive tendencies, which included sending "annoying" online messages to two women, Flinchum said. Neither woman pressed charges but the school's disciplinary body was notified of Cho's behavior. After one of the incidents, Cho's parents called the school concerned that their son might be suicidal after one of the women rejected him. School officials responded by taking Cho to the Carilion New River Valley Medical Center in December of 2005, Flinchum said.
Before the shootings, Cho creeped out classmates in other ways. He wrote violent poetry and plays. He took unsolicited pictures of other students with his cell phone.
Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine (D) said yesterday he will create an independent review panel to investigate Virginia Tech's handling of the shootings after widespread criticism that the school waited too long to order a lock down of the campus. Cho killed his first victim shortly after 7 a.m. For more than two hours, the school failed to warn its students and faculty that a killer might be on the loose. It appears that by the time an official email about the situation went out at 9:26 a.m. danger, Cho had already crossed the campus to Norris Hall, where he shot and killed 31 students, including himself.
The review panel will also look into what Virginia Tech knew about Cho prior to the incident.
