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Mental-Health Board Faulted in Cho's Case

October 16, 2007

By Bill McKelway

RICHMOND, Va. — Legal papers laying the groundwork for another Virginia Tech wrongful-death suit allege that the local mental-health board repeatedly failed to provide required care for gunman Seung-Hui Cho.

The papers serve notice that a wrongful-death suit may be filed by a victim's relatives against the six localities that make up the New River Valley Community Services Board.

The papers allege that the regional mental-health board "repeatedly failed to meet" statutory requirements to monitor Cho's adherence to an outpatient treatment plan and to recommend a specific course of treatment.

The notices were being served on officials in Radford and Blacksburg as well as the counties of Montgomery, Pulaski, Giles and Floyd, although the services board and Virginia Tech are not specifically cited as potential defendants.

Robert Hall, a Fairfax County-based lawyer, declined to comment yesterday about the allegations and said that his clients, the family of Virginia Tech victim Erin Nicole Peterson, also would not comment. Peterson was from Centreville, where Cho also lived.

The notices are in effect warnings of a potential suit but do not dictate that terms of the suit or that it will actually be filed. Notice of potential claims against a state agency are not due for a year from April 16.

Representatives of the named localities either declined comment yesterday or could not be reached. A spokesman for the community services board said there would be no comment since the board was not specifically named as a potential defendant.

Last week, Washington lawyer Peter Grenier served another set of legal notices of potential claims against independent governments by relatives of 20 deceased or wounded victims of Cho's April 16 shooting rampage.

Grenier focused on the allegedly negligent law-enforcement response to the shootings, especially to the initial shootings of two students in the West Ambler Johnston dormitory. Those deaths occurred about two hours before the Norris Hall onslaught that took 30 lives, including Cho's. Almost two dozen others were wounded.

Grenier filed notices for 20 clients on Montgomery County, the town of Blacksburg, and the state.

Hall's notice also addresses the police response and argues that Blacksburg police and other police agencies wrongfully concluded after West Ambler Johnston "that the killer was no longer on the campus and posed no risk of harm to others" at Virginia Tech.

Both notices chart much of the material reported by the Virginia Tech Review Panel but go a step further, claiming negligence.

The conclusions about the shooter were made despite "a paucity of evidence to support them" and were based on "inferences drawn from other inferences," Hall said.

The police actions constituted "gross negligence," according to Hall, and resulted in a failure to promptly alert other students and faculty.

Contact Bill McKelway at (804) 649-6601 or bmckelway@timesdispatch.com.