Continuing Coverage by:

Tech police felt Cho was suicidal in 2005

April 18, 2007

By Joe Mackenka

BLACKSBURG, Va. — Virginia Tech Police Chief Wendell Flinchum said yesterday that campus authorities had contact with Cho Seung-Hui on several occasions in the fall of 2005. Those contacts led police to obtain a temporary detention order for him out of fear he might have been suicidal.

Cho has been identified by authorities as the student responsible for killing 32 people on campus Monday before taking his own life.

Speaking at a news conference yesterday morning, Flinchum said that on two occasions in the fall of 2005, female students called campus police about what they described as being approached by Cho in an annoying manner. In both cases, the women said there were no threats, and they did not want to press charges, Flinchum said.

"That's the way it was characterized: annoying," Flinchum said.

Cho was not charged, but campus officials, after talking with him about concerns that he might be suicidal, obtained a temporary detention order on Dec. 13, 2005, the day of the second incident, Flinchum said. As a result, Cho was evaluated by a public mental-health agency and transported to a mental-health facility that day.

"I am not aware of any additional incidents," Flinchum said.

In seeking to have Cho committed, Virginia Tech officials did not use Cook Counseling Center, the on-campus facility, but went through ACCESS, a state-mandated agency that handles mental-health emergencies.

"We normally go through ACCESS because they have the power to commit people if they need to be committed," Flinchum said.

Col. W. Steven Flaherty, superintendent of the Virginia State Police, said mental-health evaluations and commitments do not necessarily disqualify people from owning handguns.
"There's no record in the mental health file that we checked that said there's anything prohibiting him from purchasing a gun," Flaherty said.

Flaherty said police have a fingerprint on one of the guns used in the shootings to link Cho to the deaths of two students in the West Ambler Johnston dormitory on Monday. The dormitory shootings were followed by the shooting deaths of 30 more people later that morning in Norris Hall, an academic building where police said Cho also killed himself.

Police are trying to establish what led Cho to Norris Hall.

"There's no connection that we're aware of at this time," Flaherty said.

Beyond the fingerprint evidence, police are still trying to establish links between Cho and the dormitory shooting. The dorm has no security cameras.

"We don't have any hard evidence at this time to put him there," Flaherty said.

Joe Mackenka is a staff writer for the Richmond Times-Dispatch.