WASHINGTON – The massacre of students and staff in Blacksburg, the tiny campus town in the Blue Ridge mountains in southern Virginia, was the worst mass shooting in modern US history.
Virginia Tech University officials should have been quicker to notify students and faculty about two killings on campus hours before the deadliest shooting rampage in modern U.S. history, according to a state report released on Thursday.
While much of it focuses on gun control, mental health issues and Cho’s instability, it all comes down to Tech’s response. The report says Tech officials might have saved lives, if they had notified faculty and students sooner about the first two shootings on campus.
It wasn’t until 9.26am that the school sent the first email to students and faculty. He began shooting inside Norris Hall about 20 minutes later and then killed himself.
Two hours later, Cho turned up on the other side of campus, where he killed 30 other students and teachers, methodically gunning them down in a classroom building.
The report, released on Kaine’s Web site, said university police concluded prematurely that their initial lead in the first shootings was good. Police had pursued another suspect they believed was no longer on the campus.
As far as security measures go, Tech was still in the process of installing a text messaging system in April. The school had also installed four of six loudspeakers at the time. The four didn’t send out an announcement until after the mass shooting at Norris Hall had already begun.
“The VTPD (Virginia Tech Police Department) erred in not requesting … a campus-wide notification that two persons had been killed and that all students and staff should be cautious and alert,” said the report by the eight-member panel, which included former U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge.
A Virginia Tech review last week said the university should step up counseling for troubled students and monitor those who may turn violent.
The report said Cho exhibited signs of mental health problems during his childhood, but that his schools responded well to these signs and, with his parents’ involvement, provided services to address his issues. He also received private psychiatric treatment and counselling for selective mutism - a childhood anxiety disorder characterised by a reluctance to speak in social situations - and depression.
The mother of one of the students killed says the panel’s findings are about what she expected. Holly Sherman’s daughter Leslie died that day. Sherman says the panel found what the families have long known that the delay in notifying students of the first shootings was too long.
Despite what school officials believed, federal privacy laws would have allowed for the communication of some information about his problems to local, state and campus police, the report said.