RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events Shooting at Virginia Tech

My reference to you, was not to imply that you shared Obama's view, BSAMS. It was just noting, with some amusement, that Obama also tried to draw a connection, albeit a piss poor one.

NBC is doing something extremely stupid by running those photos the Virginia Tech shooter sent them.



Are they crazy? This will encourage every publicity seeking loser in the world to do something similar to get himself on TV.

That's right, G - Man.... and, in a sick way, it's almost like MSNBC WANTS people to do just that.... to be able to create MORE news for them to cover.

I was just told that NBC (I think) reported that this kid was almost committed a few years ago. I very much believe this was a preventable event, with enough warning signs far enough in advance that someone could have done something. In hind site, the person who chose not to commit him probably regrets that decision, since it might have prevented the murder of 32 people, and the numerous injuries and lives destroyed.

Brad,I am fairly certain that whoever had the chance to commit Cho and didn't - will feel guilty over that for the rest of her or his life.

Unfortunately, that's just not good enough for the 32 dead victims and their families, and all of the injured.

I know.... and I am worried about the next batch of asshole losers who will copy Cho and cause more suffering...

His parents ought to have had him committed. I was talking to some people at work about this today, with all that WAS known about his chemical imbalances and persistant sociopathic extremism behaviors, and his percieved threat toward other students and facualty -- why DIDN'T they commit him?

Because they are the horrible scum that raised him.

If he was under 18 I'd say they should be put in prison for the rest of their lives.

Way to be a quick judger, Emo. I have yet to hear any information regarding his parents.

They raised a child who ended up killing over 30 innocent people. They are scum.

There was a kid that killed his grandparents after taking Zoloft, IIRC his grandparents weren't bad people.

Were his grandparents raising him? If so then it is partially the grandparents fault.

whatever. people are responsable for their own actions, regardless of circumstances.

I agree with that but I also think parents (or whoever raises a kid) is responsible for their actions until they are 18.

He was 20-something

Then it wasn't their fault and he wasn't a kid. Once you turn 18 you're not a kid anymore.

rex, that would be like blaming your parents for you being a unemployed leach that fucks socks. im am almost certain you parents didnt teach you to be so repulsive that you can only find sexual satisfaction in woven wool knowing a lonely pitiful existence, that will never know the touch of a woman. it would be silly to blame them of that.

If I had hurt feelings everytime someone called me a nappy headed ho...

...I'd just be hurting all the time!

What is sad about this situation is that Cho was, at the very least, not removed from the school system back when all the alarms were going off.

While we haven't heard very much about the Parents I have a sneaking suspicion that they are good people and they are in total shock.

I have read quite a bit of Cho's rambling monologues.

It's .. strange, but he was actually talking about himself when he tells whoever he imagined would be listening to his rants that " Blood is on your hands. "

He refused to deal with his issues directly, so he projected them onto everyone else and blamed them for his behavior.

I'd say that reality and Cho were strangers.

Va. Tech Awarding Degrees to Victims
By MATT APUZZO, Associated Press Writer
36 minutes ago

BLACKSBURG, Va. - Long before he snapped, Virginia Tech gunman Cho Seung-Hui was picked on, pushed around and laughed at over his shyness and the strange way he talked when he was a schoolboy in the Washington suburbs, former classmates say.

Chris Davids, a Virginia Tech senior who graduated from Westfield High School in Chantilly, Va., with Cho in 2003, recalled that the South Korean immigrant almost never opened his mouth and would ignore attempts to strike up a conversation.

Once, in English class, the teacher had the students read aloud, and when it was Cho's turn, he just looked down in silence, Davids recalled. Finally, after the teacher threatened him with an F for participation, Cho started to read in a strange, deep voice that sounded "like he had something in his mouth," Davids said.

"As soon as he started reading, the whole class started laughing and pointing and saying, `Go back to China,'" Davids said.

The high school classmates' accounts add to the psychological portrait that is beginning to take shape, and could shed light on Cho's state of mind in the video rant he mailed to NBC in the middle of his rampage Monday at Virginia Tech.

He shot 32 people to death and committed suicide in the deadliest one-man shooting rampage in modern U.S. history.

In the often-incoherent and disjointed video, the 23-year-old Cho portrays himself as persecuted and rants about rich kids.

"Your Mercedes wasn't enough, you brats," says Cho, a South Korean immigrant whose parents work at a dry cleaners in suburban Washington. "Your golden necklaces weren't enough, you snobs. Your trust funds wasn't enough. Your vodka and cognac wasn't enough. All your debaucheries weren't enough. Those weren't enough to fulfill your hedonistic needs. You had everything."

Among the victims of the massacre were two other Westfield High graduates: Reema Samaha and Erin Peterson. Both young women graduated from the high school last year. Police said it is not clear whether Cho singled them out.

Stephanie Roberts, 22, a fellow member of Cho's graduating class at Westfield High, said she never witnessed anyone picking on Cho in high school.

"I just remember he was a shy kid who didn't really want to talk to anybody," she said. "I guess a lot of people felt like maybe there was a language barrier."

But she said friends of hers who went to middle school with Cho told her they recalled him getting picked on there.

"There were just some people who were really mean to him and they would push him down and laugh at him," Roberts said Wednesday. "He didn't speak English really well and they would really make fun of him."

Cho came to this country as a boy in 1992. His parents work at a dry cleaners.

Virginia Tech student Alison Heck said a suitemate of hers on campus _ Christina Lilick _ found a mysterious question mark scrawled on the dry erase board on her door. Lilick went to the same high school as Cho, according to Lilick's Facebook page. Cho once scrawled a question mark on the sign-in sheet on the first day of a literature class, and other students came to know him as "the question mark kid."

"I don't know if she knew that it was him for sure," Heck said. "I do remember that that fall that she was being stalked and she had mentioned the question mark. And there was a question mark on her door."

Heck added: "She just let us know about it just in case there was a strange person walking around our suite."

Lilick could not immediately be located for comment, via e-mail or telephone.

On Wednesday, NBC received a package containing a rambling and often incoherent 23-page written statement from Cho, 28 video clips and 43 photos _ many of them showing Cho brandishing handguns. A Postal Service time stamp reads 9:01 a.m. _ between the two attacks on campus.

The package helped explain one mystery: where the gunman was and what he did during that two-hour window between the first burst of gunfire, at a high-rise dorm, and the second attack, at a classroom building.

"You had a hundred billion chances and ways to have avoided today," a snarling Cho says on video. "But you decided to spill my blood. You forced me into a corner and gave me only one option. The decision was yours. Now you have blood on your hands that will never wash off."

Col. Steve Flaherty, superintendent of the Virginia State Police, said Thursday that the material contained little they did not already know. Flaherty said he was disappointed that NBC decided to broadcast parts of it.

"I just hate that a lot of people not used to seeing that type of image had to see it," he said.

On NBC's "Today" show Thursday, host Meredith Vieira said the decision to air the information "was not taken lightly." Some victims' relatives canceled their plans to speak with NBC because they were upset over the airing of the images, she said.

"I saw his picture on TV, and when I did I just got chills," said Kristy Venning, a junior from Franklin County, Va. "There's really no words. It shows he put so much thought into this and I think it's sick."

Some of the pictures in the video package show him smiling; others show him frowning and snarling. Some depict him brandishing two weapons at a time, one in each hand. He wears a khaki-colored military-style vest, fingerless gloves, a black T-shirt, a backpack and a backward, black baseball cap. Another photo shows him swinging a hammer two-fisted. Another shows an angry-looking Cho holding a gun to his temple.

There has been some speculation, especially among online forums, that Cho may have been inspired by the South Korean movie "Oldboy." One of the killer's mailed photos shows him brandishing a hammer _ the signature weapon of the protagonist _ and in a pose similar to one from the film.

The film won the Gran Prix prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 2004. It is about a man unjustly imprisoned for 15 years. After escaping, he goes on a rampage against his captor.

Authorities on Thursday disclosed that more than a year before the massacre, Cho had been accused of sending unwanted messages to two women and was taken to a psychiatric hospital on a magistrate's orders and was pronounced a danger to himself. But he was released with orders to undergo outpatient treatment.

The disclosure added to the rapidly growing list of warning signs that appeared well before the student opened fire. Among other things, Cho's twisted, violence-filled writings and sullen, vacant-eyed demeanor had disturbed professors and students so much that he was removed from one English class and was repeatedly urged to get counseling.

___

Cho was badly picked on.

Okay, this does shed some light on why Cho was so angry. However, a lot of people are picked on during public school.... it's a sad fact of childhood.

I, myself was picked on terribly...almost constantly. I could tell you all here of the things that kids, members of my own family and even a few teachers did to me that you could not handle.

I was a loner for most of my childhood.

I escaped into a world where I wrote and drew my own comics, wrote short stories, read a lot and listened to plenty of music.

In college, it began to change. I finally had friends! I went to parties and enjoyed a bit of actual popularity. I was liked and accepted as "The nice guy. "

I never did anything to get back at or hurt the ones who were cruel to me. That is not my nature. I'm the nice guy. I help at my club socials. I talk. I listen. I give advice.

I went through a lot and I turned out okay. I know I am a good person; that I have friends who care about me, my mom who is good to me, and cats that adore me.

Cho obviously did not get help when he needed it badly.

He did not have friends or a viable support system.

I .. guess I feel a very tiny bit sad for him, as he had choices..get help..take medication.. to not hurt others..

He had the same choices all humans have. Right, wrong, fast, cold, nice, cruel.

But I feel infinitely more sorry for the young lives he snuffed.. for the 76 yr old teacher who died protecting those lives.. and the family and friends who must now live without their sons and daughters.

Because of a senseless act of violence.

Cho always had a choice, although he vehemently denies this in his rambling notes.

Now he'll always be remembered as a sick asshole who murdered innocents.


Brilliant choice, Cho.

Well said BeardGuy!

On a sidenote our local news carried a story where some nutcase has painted "kill Cho's family" across the pavement.

I also just heard a newsbit about some guy in California threatening to make Monday's massacre look like a walk in the park. What is wrong with these people?

You know something? I look at that picture of Cho w/ two guns waving in the air and all I see is some goofy geek! He's laughable. I hope his dead ass can look down on me and see me laughing at his sad ass. Dumbass.

Schools on lockdown in Yuba City. Another dumbass scaring good people. Let's hope that's all he does. Dumbass.

If I was in charge of a network, I'd tell the news division they can only run photos like that if they had a caption like "Yes: the shooter had a small penis", "probable virgin" or "fag" plastered over them. THAT might help discourage copycats.

I guess the popular contention is that Cho's rhetoric should not have been splashed all over the TV. Was it just too soon? Would it have been alright at some later date on a Biography show maybe? I just watched Biography shows on Tim McVeigh and the Unabomber this past weekend and found them insightful and hopeful that maybe their behavior laid bare for all to see may help prevent future atrocities.

On a sidenote Neither Tim McVeigh or the Unabomber fared well w/ the opposite sex and this was certainly an underlying element of their feelings and their eventual decision to strike back at a society they felt no part of. I'm sure Cho will fit this pattern as well.

Good Gob Almighty! Have they never heard of a twenty dollar bill and a prostitute?

NEWSFLASH! Cho's second gun bought on-line! WTF!?! Gob Bless the internet!

Here we go:

Long before he snapped, Virginia Tech gunman Cho Seung-Hui was picked on, pushed around and laughed at over his shyness and the strange way he talked when he was a schoolboy in the Washington suburbs, former classmates say.

I wonder how many of his victims were ALSO picked on in school?