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Seung-Hui Cho biography

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Quick Facts

  • NAME: Seung-Hui Cho
  • OCCUPATION: Mass Murderer
  • BIRTH DATE: January 18, 1984
  • DEATH DATE: April 16, 2007
  • EDUCATION: Virginia Tech
  • PLACE OF BIRTH: South Korea
  • PLACE OF DEATH: Blacksburg, Virginia
  • AKA: "Question Mark"
  • Full Name: Cho Seung-Hui

Best Known For

Student Seung-Hui Cho shot and killed 30 people on Virginia Tech's campus in 2007. The mass murder ended when he turned the gun and shot himself in the head.

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Five weeks before the shooting, Cho bought his first handgun and purchased the second one closer to the date of the attack. From evidence found in his dorm room, it was clear that he had been planning the assault on his fellow students and the faculty for quite some time.

The Virginia Tech Massacre

On April 16, 2007, Cho began his rampage by killing two students in a dormitory after 7 a.m. He later went to a classroom building and began shooting students and faculty members, killing 30 people and injuring numerous others around 9:45 a.m. The spree only ended when Cho turned one of his guns on himself, shooting himself in the head. The entire nation was shocked and horrified by the events at Virginia Tech. Up until that point, the largest campus shooting had taken place in 1966, when Charles Whitman killed 15 people on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin.

In between the two sets of attacks, Cho went to the post office to mail a package to NBC News in New York. Received two days after the murders, it contained video clips, photographs of Cho posing with his weapons, and a rambling document. In one of the video clips, he rails against rich "brats," and talks about being bullied and picked on; he also attacks Christianity and positioned himself as some type of avenger for the weak and defenseless. Cho even referenced the notorious Columbine school shooters, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.

After the shooting, Virginia Tech and many schools across the nation began examining their crisis management plans, as well as how they identify and handle potentially dangerous students.

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