The Manifestation of EVIL: Cho Seung-Hui

Update: 10:50 a.m.
I was in a meeting, so updates from the last press briefing are a little late. Here are the details I gleaned while keeping one eye on the meeting and one eye on the news conference:

The shooter at yesterday's Virginia Tech Massacre has been identified as Cho Seung-Hui (or Seung-Hui Cho; Cho is the surname). He was a 23 year old native of South Korea. Cho was in the US on an F1 student visa, studying English at Virgina Tech. He was a senior whose address lead to an apartment in Centreville, VA. At VTech, Cho was living in suite 2121 at the Harper Hall dorm.

Police have matched fingerprints and ballistics evidence to both shootings -- and to Cho Seung-Hui. They have also obtained a receipt for the purchase of a 9mm Glock handgun in March of this year. At this point, I have not heard anything about the purchase or ownership of the other gun used in the killing spree -- a Walther P22 .22 caliber pistol.

EDITORIAL: I would wager that police will end up finding a history of violent media as the mainstay of this demon's existence -- in violent video games, horror movies or extreme music such as gangsta rap or goth/death metal. Seung-Hui Cho (pronounced Sung Hue-wee Shoo) didn't just flip out and kill Emily Hilscher, and her West AJ dorm RA, Ryan Clark -- and then brood for almost two hours before heading over to Norris Hall to open fire on more than 40 other people. There is something deeper that an act of "passion" here. Cho's violence shows a rage that is not even close to normal in sane people. There is also evidence that the massacre was premeditated -- and at least partially planned over a period of more than 10 days.

UPDATE: A scrubbed Washington Post article from 4/17/07 stated, "...Several Korean youths who knew Cho Seung Hui from his high school days said he was a fan of violent video games, particularly Counterstrike, a hugely popular online game, in which players join terrorism or counterterrorism groups and try to shoot each other using..."
Since the text has been scrubbed from the original article, I did some investigating to make sure it was originally there. Here is what I found:
Washington Post Search Engine
Counter-Strike & Va. Tech
I wonder why the Post decided to redact the text -- possibly because they didn't want to show a link between violent media and violence acted out?

Virginia Tech Massacre: News Conference Details

Update: 5:16 p.m.
Officials are holding their second major news conference of the day -- in relation to the murder of 32 students and faculty on the Virginia Tech University campus in Blacksburg, VA.

Here are the highlights:

• VT.edu is pretty much overwhelmed and not available.
• Virginia Tech has arranged for counseling for faculty, staff and students.
• Charles Steger, university president, spoke with President Bush within the last hour. He has also spoken with the Governor twice.

Confirmed details of the 48 dead and wounded:

• 31 deaths inside Norris Hall -- including gunman
• 15 other victims injured or wounded
  
• 2 confirmed dead in West Ambler Johnston -- in addition to 31 @ Norris Hall (one female victim / one male victim)
• West AJ was closed immediately, but the rest of campus was not locked down because police thought incident was isolated and that shooter had left the dorm
  
• Gunman carried NO identification, so law enforcement have not identified him
• Students must have "swipe card" in order to enter dorms during early morning hours
  
• Anticipate being able to release list of those who were killed or injured by tomorrow
• Don't know if shooter was a student or not
• One gunman deceased, but police DON'T know if two incidents were related
• Second incident happened while police were investigating first incident.
• Norris Hall gunman committed suicide
• Suspect first shooting was domestic in nature -- both victims were found in a single West AJ dorm room (one female victim / one male victim)
  
• NO shootout between officers & gunman (despite video showing multiple law enforcement officers firing weapons towards campus buildings)
  
• Some Norris Hall doors were chained shut (from the inside) -- probably by gunman
• No one is in custody -- but active investigation is ongoing as to whether or not there are two gunmen
• Another news conference will be held tonight at around 7:00pm ET