Professors: Cho was very troubled BLACKSBURG, Va. (AP) — A very troubling picture is emerging of the man responsible for the deadliest shooting rampage in U.S. history.Virginia Tech creative writing professor Lucinda Roy told NBC’s “Today” show that Cho Heung-Sui was one of the most disturbed students she had ever seen. Roy says she tried to get help for Cho and wishes more could have been done.
Professors and classmates were alarmed by the violence and perversion in his class writings. One former classmate says he and others were seriously worried that Cho could be a school shooter.
Acclaimed poet Nikki Giovanni, who was one of Cho’s professors, told CNN that her students were so unnerved by Cho’s behavior that she had security check on her room and eventually had him taken out of her class.
One of Cho’s suitemates told ABC’s “Good Morning America” that he wasn’t friendly and would just give one-word answers.
Virginia Tech student relates dramatic escape from gunman
BLACKSBURG, Va. (AP) — A student described what it was like at Virginia Tech’s Norris Hall when the gunman burst into his classroom. Twenty-year-old Alec Calhoun says he was in a mechanics class on the second floor when he and his classmates heard a thunderous sound in the room next door. When they heard screams, Calhoun says they realized it was gunfire. He says he began flipping desks to use as hiding places while others dashed to the windows and began jumping. Calhoun says he also ran to the window, and was about the eighth or ninth person to jump. He also thinks he was the last. Calhoun says two students behind him were shot.Calhoun says just before jumping, he glanced back at his professor, who stayed behind — perhaps to block the door. The professor was killed.Â
A look at some of the students and faculty killed in the Virginia Tech shootings (Source: AP)ROSS ABDALLAH ALAMEDDINE - a 20-year-old sophomore from Saugus, Massachusetts, who had just declared English as his major. On Facebook-dot-com, friends have created a memorial page that describes him as “an intelligent, funny, easygoing guy.” Zach Allen, who attended Austin Preparatory School in Massachusetts with Alameddine, remembers him as an “amazing kid,” who always made him smile. A family friend says Alameddine was killed in the classroom building. Alameddine’s mother says she is angered by how victims’ relatives were notified of the shooting. She says it was “outrageous” that she didn’t hear about her son’s death until a quarter to eleven Monday night.
CHRISTOPHER JAMES BISHOP - 35, taught German at Virginia Tech. He also helped oversee an exchange program with a German university. He decided which German-language students at Virginia Tech could attend the German university to improve their language skills. His Web site says he had spent four years living in Germany, learning German, teaching English, drinking wheat beer, and “wooing a certain fraulein.” That’s a reference to his wife, Stephanie, who also teaches in Virginia Tech’s German program.
RYAN CLARK - called “Stack” by his friends, many of whom he met as a resident assistant at Ambler Johnson Hall, where the first shootings took place. The 22-year-old from Martinez, Georgia, was a fifth-year student working toward degrees in biology and English, and a member of the Marching Virginians band. His friend Gregory Walton says Clark was “just one of the greatest people you could possibly know.” Walton learned from an ambulance driver that Clark was among the dead. Walton says he doesn’t think he ever saw Clark mad in the five years he knew him.
JOCELYN COUTURE-NOWAK - a French instructor, is credited with being instrumental in the creation of the first French school in a town in Nova Scotia. She lived there in the 1990s with her husband, Jerzy Nowak, the head of the horticulture department at Virginia Tech. A student who identifies herself as DeAnne Leigh Pelchat describes her gratitude to Couture-Nowak on a Web site. In part she wrote, “You’ll always have a place in my heart.”
DANIEL PEREZ CUEVA - a 21-year-old from Peru, whose mother says he was killed while in a French class. According to the Virginia Tech Web site, Perez Cueva was a student of international relations. On RPP radio in Peru, his father said he was trying to obtain a humanitarian visa from the U.S. consulate here. A spokesman at the U.S. Embassy in Peru says the student’s father “will receive all the attention possible when he applies” for the visa.
KEVIN GRANATA - a professor of engineering science and mechanics, who served in the military and later conducted orthopedic research in hospitals before coming to Virginia Tech. At the school, he and his students researched muscle and reflex response and robotics. The head of the school’s engineering science and mechanics department says Granata was one of the top five biomechanics researchers in the country working on movement dynamics in cerebral palsy. One engineering professor says Granata was successful and kind, someone who “still found time to spend with his family” coaching his children in many sports and extracurricular activities.
CAITLIN HAMMAREN - a 19-year-old sophomore from Westtown, New York, who majored in international studies and French. The principal at Hammaren’s high school says “Caitlin was a leader among our students.” The principal says Minisink Valley High School students and teachers shared their grief at a counseling center set up in the school.
EMILY JANE HILSCHER - a 19-year-old freshman majoring in animal and poultry sciences, who was known around her hometown as an animal lover. A family friend says Hilscher worked at a veterinarian’s office and cared about animals “her whole life.” The family friend says Hilscher lived on the same dorm floor as victim Ryan Clark. Fellow 19-year-old Will Nachless says Hilscher “was always very friendly,” “very outgoing,” “and she was great in chemistry.”
JARRETT LEE LANE -Â a 22-year-old senior civil engineering student who was valedictorian of his high school class in tiny Narrows, Virginia. It’s just 30 miles from Virginia Tech. Lane’s high school has put up a memorial to him that includes pictures, musical instruments and his athletic jerseys. Lane played the trombone, ran track, and played football and basketball at Narrows High School. His brother-in-law Daniel Farrell calls Lane fun-loving and “full of spirit.”
MATTHEW J. LA PORT - a 20-year-old freshman from Dumont, New Jersey, who was attending Virginia Tech on an Air Force ROTC scholarship and belonged to the school’s Corps of Cadets. La Porte was a graduate of the Carson Long Military Institute in New Bloomfield, Pennsylvania. He credited the academy with turning his life around. Tuesday, the school posted a memorial photograph of La Porte in his school uniform on its Web site. According to his profile on a music Web site, La Porte’s favorite artists were Meshuggah, Metallica, Soundgarden, Creed and Live.
LIVIU LIBRESCU - an Israeli engineering and math lecturer, was known for his research. But his son says his father will be remembered as a hero for protecting students as the gunman tried to enter his classroom. Librescu taught at Virginia Tech for 20 years and had an international reputation for his work in aeronautical engineering. Librescu’s son says his father’s students sent e-mails detailing how the professor saved their lives by blocking the doorway of his classroom from the approaching gunman before he was fatally shot. His son says students started opening windows and jumping out.
G.V. LOGANATHAN - born in southern India and had been a civil and environmental engineering professor at Virginia Tech since 1982. The 51-year-old won several awards for excellence in teaching, had served on the faculty senate and was an adviser to about 75 undergraduate students. His brother tells a news channel in southern India that Loganathan had been “a driving force for all of us.” He says, “We all feel like we have had an electric shock. We do not know what to do.”
DANIEL O’NEIL - a graduate student in engineering and played guitar and wrote his own songs. He posted them on a Web site, resident-hippy-dot-com. A friend, Steve Craveiro, describes him as smart, responsible and a hard worker, someone who never got into trouble. O’Neil graduated in 2002 from Lincoln High School in Rhode Island and graduated from Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, before heading to Virginia Tech, where he was also a teaching assistant.
JUAN RAMON ORTIZ - A native of Puerto Rico, Juan Ramon Ortiz, was teaching a class as part of his graduate program in civil engineering at Virginia Tech. The family’s neighbors in the San Juan suburb of Bayamon remember Ortiz as a quiet, dedicated son who decorated his parents’ one-story concrete house each Christmas and played in a salsa band with his father on weekends. Marilys Alvarez says she heard Ortiz’s mother scream from the house next door when she learned of her son’s death. Alvarez says she’s wanted to study in the United States, but is now reconsidering.
MARY KAREN READ - born in South Korea into an Air Force family and lived in Texas and California before finally settling in the northern Virginia suburb of Annandale. The 19-year-old considered a handful of colleges, including nearby George Mason University, before choosing Virginia Tech because it was a popular destination among her Annandale High School classmates. Her aunt says she thinks Read had struggled adjusting to Tech’s sprawling 26-hundred-acre campus. But she had recently started making friends and looking into a sorority. Karen Kuppinger says they became concerned after three or four hours passed and she hadn’t picked up her cell phone or answered her e-mail. The aunt says the family thought “she would pop up.”
JEREMY HERBSTRITT - loved to chat, so much so that high school classmates voted him “Most Talkative.” He was 27, with two undergraduate degrees from Penn State, one in biochemistry and molecular biology from 2003, and another in civil engineering from 2006. He grew up on a small farm just outside the central Pennsylvania borough of Bellefonte, where his father, Michael, raised steer and sheep. His career goal was to be a civil engineer, and he talked of getting into environmental work after school.
RACHAEL HILL - a freshman studying biology at Virginia Tech after graduating from Grove Avenue Christian School in Henrico County. Hill, an only child, was popular and funny, had a penchant for shoes and was competitive on the volleyball court. A Grove Avenue school administrator says, “Rachael was a very bright, articulate, intelligent, beautiful, confident, poised young woman. She had a tremendous future in front of her.” He says “Obviously, the Lord had other plans for her.” Her father, Guy Hill, said the family was too distraught to talk about Hill on Tuesday, but relatives were planning to have memorial events later in the week.
LAUREN MCCAIN - On her MySpace page, Lauren McCain listed “the love of my life” as Jesus Christ. Her family said the 20-year-old international studies major became a Christian some time ago. Her uncle, Jeff Elliott, told The Oklahoman newspaper that she was an avid reader, was learning German and had almost mastered Latin. She was home-schooled and had worked at a department store for about a year to save money for college.
MICHAEL POHLE - of Flemington, New Jersey, was 23. He was to graduate in a few weeks with a degree in biological sciences. In high school, Pohle played on the football and lacrosse teams. One of his old lacrosse coaches, Bob Shroeder, describes him as “a good kid who did everything that good kids do.”
JULIA PRYDE - a graduate student from Middletown, New Jersey. She was an “exceptional student academically and personally,” according to the chairman of the biological systems and engineering department where Pryde was seeking her master’s degree. Her hometown has been touched by tragedy before. It lost 37 residents or past residents in the Nine-Eleven terrorist attacks.
Read what Virginia Tech students are saying about the massacre at these blog sites:
Blacksburg Beacon
Bryce’s Journal
