RICHMOND – Gov. Timothy M. Kaine said Wednesday he is troubled that Virginia Tech student Seung-Hui Cho’s violent class essays, including one with a narrative similar to the massacre he carried out, were not widely shared with law enforcement and university officials.
Kaine said the issue is “a significant feature” in the report due for release Thursday by the panel he appointed to review the April 16 shootings.
Kaine said it was hard to understand why more was not done about a student who once showed a fascination with the 1999 Columbine High School shooting spree and considered the two students who committed it martyrs.
Some of the families of those killed and injured on April 16 have demanded frank answers to questions about failures that allowed Cho to commit the worst mass shooting on an American college campus, despite behavior that alarmed students, faculty and police.
Suzanne Grimes, whose son Kevin Sterne survived the shootings despite being shot in the leg, has lots of unanswered questions about how the shootings were handled.
“I know that some parents of the deceased are focusing on the mental health aspect of how Cho through all his life slipped through the cracks and I understand that,” said Grimes, of Eighty Four, Pa. “My focus is why they didn’t cancel the classes that day.”
“I think overall if the panel report does contain some accountability in it, it will offer some closure to the families,” she said.
Virginia Tech turned over a compilation of Cho’s violent writings to Virginia State Police soon after the shootings, according to Corinne Geller, a state police spokeswoman.
According to a Washington Post story, they included a 2006 fictional account of a campus shooting that previewed his deadly attack on 32 people before he killed himself.