The shooter in Monday’s massacre at Virginia Tech was hospitalized in 2005 after female students complained he stalked them, law enforcement officials said Tuesday. Virginia Tech Police Chief Wendell Flinchum said his department received one complaint in November 2005 from a female student who said Cho Seung-Hui bothered her with phone calls and in-person contact. The woman did not press charges, Flinchum said, but officers did talk to Cho about his conduct.
A month later, around the same time concerns surfaced over Cho’s violent creative writing assignments, another female student complained about Cho sending her instant messages. Again, no charges were pressed.
“I am not saying they were threats,” Flinchum said of the two complaints. “The victims say they were annoying messages.”
Police also received a call from a student saying that Cho may be suicidal around the time of the second stalking complaint. Authorities recommended the Centreville resident undergo counseling, which Cho agreed to. After talking with counselors at a Blacksburg mental health agency, Cho was committed to Carilion St. Albans Psychiatric Hospital in nearby Radford.
Flinchum did not know how long Cho stayed in the facility.
“We believe it was a voluntary commitment but we are not positive,” the chief added.
After December 2005, however, police had no other contact with Cho.
Flinchum said that the two women who complained about Cho were not among the two students killed in a dormitory room at West Ambler Johnston Hall and 30 faculty members and students fatally shot in classrooms and a stairwell at Norris Hall.
“We are not aware of any connection to any of the victims,” said Col. Steve Flaherty, superintendent of the Virginia State Police. “We are trying to determine what made Norris Hall a point of interest on Monday morning and what it was that made (West Ambler Johnston Hall) a point of interest to whomever committed that particular offense.”
Complicating investigators’ work is a lack of any “hard evidence” that puts Cho inside West Ambler Johnston Hall, though ballistics evidence shows one of the guns Cho used to slaughter students and faculty in Norris Hall was used the West Ambler Johnston shootings. A “key card” is required to enter all dormitories at Virginia Tech, police said, and it is not clear how Cho, who lived in a nearby dormitory, would have gotten into West Ambler Johnston.
School officials declined to second-guess themselves Wednesday about their reaction to the stalking complaints about Cho and concerns raised about his disturbing writings. Instead they will wait for results of an independent investigation of the massacre that Gov. Tim Kaine commissioned yesterday.
The hospitalization came more than a year before Cho purchased two handguns a month apart, but did not disqualify Cho from buying a gun.
“There was no record that he had anything in his background that would have prevented him from legally purchasing a firearm,” Flaherty said.
Police said Cho paid $571 for a Glock 9 mm handgun, which was used in the shooting, and a box of ammunition at a Roanoke gun store five weeks ago. In February, he bought a .22 caliber Walther handgun from a Blacksburg pawn shop that he had ordered online.
