New Delhi: As Virginia Tech comes to terms with the horrific, cold-blooded massacre that left 33 people dead, sketchy details about the killer are fast emerging.
It’s now confirmed that the gunman was 23-year-old South Korean Cho Seung-Hui, a loner on the close-knit Virginia Tech campus and a morbid playwright who was cautioned against by the University’s English chair.
Students and teachers remember Cho as a “shy guy” who would never initiate friendship and would stand out as a stranger in a crowd of 26,000 on campus.
Cho’s suite-mate and Indian-origin student Karan Grewal has been quoted as saying by the US media that Cho “ate his meals alone in the dining hall and shunned attempts at friendship.”
Grewal said he saw Cho just two hours before the first shooting occurred. "He came in, I saw him look normal as usual, no expression on his face, he didn't seem angry or you know sad or anything, just the normal look on his face, just, like the picture," he was quoted as saying by US’ CBS News.
CBS News quotes Grewal as saying that Cho barely spoke to his own roommates. " He didn't look like a guy who could really do that. He wasn't angry. He just appeared to be shy, not angry," he said.
Grewal- an accounting major at the university- as also been quoted as saying by Los Angeles Times that he did not notice any abnormal behaviour by Cho and went back to sleep while Cho stayed awake.
Many students on the Va Tech campus also said that Cho was jokingly discussed as someone who would “do something” considering his macabre twist of mind that was evident from his plays.
'Play'-ing morbid
Lucinda Roy, former chairperson of Virginia Tech's English department, said the anger Cho expressed was palpable if not explicit.
Cho, an English major, never wrote about guns or killing people, she said. But his writing was disturbing enough that she went to police and other university officials to seek help.
"The threats seemed to be underneath the surface," she said. "They were not explicit, and that was the difficulty the police had."
"My argument was that he seemed so disturbed that we needed to do something about this."
Without a clear threat, nothing could be done, however, and Roy made the decision to instruct him away from other students.
"I just felt I was between a rock and a hard place," she said. "It seemed the only alternative was to send him back."
Cho was also known for suffixing his name with a question mark and was teasingly called ‘the question mark kid.’
‘Ismail Ax’
Also, many sections in the US media report that police found the words "Ismail Ax" inscribed on Cho’s arm. The meaning of the term remains unclear.
A search by police of Cho's dorm room also uncovered a note with a list of grievances and the claim: "You caused me to do this". However, it’s not yet clear as to who the “you” in question is.
There are theories that Cho was a jilted lover looking to avenge a humiliation.
(With agency inputs)
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