Families of victims in the April 2007 Virginia Tech massacre called on Gov. Tim Kaine Tuesday to reopen a state review of the worst mass shooting in the nation’s modern history.
Family members of those killed or injured in the April 16 shooting, as well as some survivors, said the Virginia Tech review panel should revisit a report that “contains grave errors, misinformation and glaring omissions.”
The state commission released the in-depth report and more than 70 recommendations four months after the attack, in which mentally ill gunman Seung-Hui Cho shot and killed 32 students and faculty and injured many others before taking his own life.
“We still suffer emotional pain dealing with the impenetrable layers of bureaucracy in our simple quest for answers,” the families wrote. “An accurate, complete and thorough accounting of what happened before, during and after April 16th, 2007, is the legacy we seek on behalf of those who died and those who survived.”
Among the reasons for the push is the recent discovery of Cho’s mental health records from the school’s counseling center, which the center’s former director, Dr. Robert Miller, said he inadvertently took home a year before the shooting and did not discover until last week.
Kaine said on WTOP radio’s monthly “Ask the Governor” program that his administration would reopen the “factual narrative” to incorporate any new information since the report was issued. But reconvening the panel, which was made up of volunteers, would be problematic, the governor said.
Kaine called the records critical and said they shouldn’t have been removed. Virginia Tech President Charles Steger expressed similar sentiments in an e-mail to school employees and victims’ families.
“It goes without saying that we were greatly disappointed to learn that, over the last three years, the records were discovered to be in the possession of the former director of the counseling center,” Steger said.
Virginia State Police, which is still carrying out a criminal investigation of the shooting, is investigating the removal of Cho’s file and will consult with the local prosecutor’s office on whether to pursue charges, said State Police spokeswoman Corinne Geller. The families asked whether State Police, and not just Virginia Tech officials, had questioned Miller in April 2007. Geller said her agency had interviewed “numerous employees” at Tech’s counseling center since the shooting, but declined to say whether Miller was among them. An attorney for Miller could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
