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: Gunman a Student

Update: 8:29 a.m. (Revised)
Overnight we have learned that the 23 year old Asian gunman was actually a college student at Virginia Tech. From the wording of reporting related to the executed warrant on his "room", it is also apparent that he was living in a dorm, not off campus. This may answer my earlier question as to why no one had focused on the perp's vehicle.
WSLS reports:

"The president of Virginia Tech says the shooter in yesterday's rampage was a student at the university. Charles Steger said the shooter in the second shooting at Norris Hall was Asian and lived in a dorm on the Blacksburg campus. Steger told ABC News that he expects that investigators will get a ballistics report this morning, and he said they will 'be making it public as soon as we can.'
Steger added News that the shooter may have been locked in West Ambler Johnston dormitory when the building was locked down after the first shooting. He says the 'investigation is unfolding as we speak.'"

I wonder why Chief Flinchum repeatedly said that the gunman was not a student at VTech.

Chinese National Named VTech Massacre Killer

Update: 11:45 p.m. (Revised)
The gunman apparently brought the chains used to lock doors in Norris Hall on campus with him. He was a 20-something, six foot tall, Chinese man toting a 9mm handgun with at least one high capacity clip, along with a .22 caliber pistol. It is also now known that the shooter brought additional ammunition with him -- as noted by multiple student witnesses.
At least two people (Chief Flinchum and a Sun Times reporter) now say they have the name of this person, but will not yet release it to the public. The man, who was reportedly NOT a VTech student, was in the US on an F1 visa (aka student visa).
Federal authorities are saying that they still cannot definitively tie the West AJ murders to the Norris Hall massacre. I'm starting to believe, more and more, that the two scenes are unrelated. However, the facts are easy enough to establish. a) Did the murdered girl in West AJ know the Chinese man at Norris Hall? b) Who did witnesses see in the dorm? c) Who is the person of interest the Blacksburg police talked to this morning? d) Can he be quickly linked to either the Chinese gunman at Norris or the young woman at West Ambler Johnston?

FOX News is reporting that the Chinese man has a page on Facebook.com. On his profile, there are pictures of him holding several weapons. We are NOT sure the Facebook.com person is the SAME PERSON who massacred 30+ people today. However, if the profile does show the shooter, the situation is even more disturbing.