A state panel has sharply criticized decisions made by Virginia Tech before and after last April’s shooting massacre, saying university officials could have saved lives by notifying students and faculty members earlier about the killings on campus. The reports concluded that If the university had issued an alert earlier or canceled classes after the first two victims were shot, the death toll might have been lower.
ALSO: Click here to read The New York Times article on the report.
FOLLOWUP: The communications breakdowns, gaps in the mental health system and confusion over student privacy laws that were identified as problems by the panel that investigated the massacre at Virginia Tech might take years to correct and require action by the federal government, members of a panel that reviewed the tragedy say.
ALSO: University president defends school's actions, says he has no plans to resign. Click here to read The New York Times article.
EARLIER: Seung Hui Cho wrote a paper for a Virginia Tech English class about a gunman planning a mass school shooting, one year before he killed 32 students and faculty members and himself in the deadliest shooting by an individual in U.S. history, according to sources familiar with the paper. The paper was written for a class in fiction writing and has not surfaced publicly. Sources say it has "eerie" parallels to Cho's shooting inside Norris Hall on April 16. One source called it "kind of a blueprint" for the shootings, but others cautioned that that was an overstatement.
Click here to read The Washington Post article.
Virginia Tech needs to improve building security, enhance its campus-wide alert system and better monitor troubled students to prevent a tragedy similar to the April 16 massacre of 32 students and faculty. A report by the university on the tragedy recommends that classrooms be equipped with electronic banners that would alert students to emergencies, that message boards be placed in hallways to provide critical information and that an electronic "people locator system" be created so that students and others could inform people of their whereabouts. Soon after the massacre, the university came under fire for not better alerting students and others to the potential dangers they faced.
Click here to read The Washington Post article.
ALSO: Fairfax County, Va., school officials determined that Seung Hui Cho suffered from an anxiety disorder so severe that they put him in special education and devised a plan to help, according to sources familiar with his history, but Virginia Tech was never told of the problem. The disorder made Cho unable to speak in social settings and was deemed an emotional disability. When he stopped getting the help that Fairfax had been providing, Cho became even more isolated and suffered severe ridicule during his four years at Virginia Tech, experts suggested. In his senior year, Cho killed 32 students and faculty members and himself in the deadliest shooting by an individual in U.S. history.
Click here to read The Washington Post article.
The chairman of the panel investigating the April 16 massacre at Virginia Tech says Seung Hui Cho's mental health background could have raised enough red flags to have prevented his rampage but that once the shooting began, it would have been nearly impossible to stop. W. Gerald Massengill says the panel's report, which is expected to be released next week, will examine the university's response to the shootings, among other issues. But he says "it would have been awfully difficult to stop Cho."
Click here to read The Washington Post article.
Two days before the April massacre at the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, witnesses saw a suspicious man in the classrooms where 30 people were shot dead and doors to the building were chained shut. Police speculate that Seung Hui Cho was practicing locking those doors as he planned his deadly shooting spree.
Click here to read The Washington Post article.
