VT gunman fired 170 rounds in nine minutes: Cops

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By KRISTEN GELINEAU

BLACKSBURG, Va. (AP) - The gunman who carried out the massacre at Virginia Tech fired more than 170 rounds in nine minutes and died with a bullet to his head in a classroom surrounded by his victims, authorities said Wednesday.

Police provided new details about the case at a news conference on the campus of Virginia Tech, but they said investigators still don't know what set the gunman off.

Seung-Hui Cho, 23, chained shut three public entrances to Norris Hall, the classroom building where he killed 30 students and teachers, police said. Two hours earlier, he had gunned down his first victims in a dormitory across campus.

State Police Superintendent Col. W. Steven Flaherty said Wednesday that investigators had compiled 500 pieces of evidence from Norris Hall but still had no answers about what motivated Cho to carry out such a bloody killing spree.

"We talk about possible motives and theories and whatnot, but we don't have any evidence to suggest anything," Flaherty said.

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Motive? What set him off?

The guy was insane.
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True. But why did he decide to go on his spree at that particular time? Why not wait another week? Why shoot up that particular building? Did he buy the P22 (purchased a few months ago) in preparation for killing everybody? Did his plans go back that far?

If they knew what set him off, they might be able to figure out where his plans all started.

Despite being crazy, folks generally have a method in their madness.
 
.

I wasn't aware that there was any real conclusive evidence that Seung
committed the first two murders. Also, exactly how were the police able to
definitively say that all the shots occurred in "nine minutes" ? Did they have
a stopwatch on the killer; did someone say "ok....Go!" ?? Everything else
I've read up to this point suggests that the rampage went on for at the
very least 20 minutes, and was likely closer to a half-hour.

Another interesting bit of information is the claim of "more than" 170 shots.
Well no kidding. Sixty people shot at least twice each, many shot more times,
is obviously going to equal at least that number. The real count, if ever
determined, will be much, much higher. Much higher.
 
I still want to know why everyone ignored the red marker writing on his arm. . . that doesn't lead to a motive, or rationalize insanity, but it does have a meaning. And yet, you wouldn't even know he wrote in large letters "ISMAEL AX" if a few discerning people didnt keep it in the alternative news.

ST
 
Why is what this guy was thinking (or what he said) more important than what he did?

Will his motive makes his crime more or less heinous? Is it more "understandable" if he was picked on, or not hugged enough? Does it lessen the impact or the horrendous nature of it? Just curious.
 
.

Nine minutes is way more than enough time to do what he did.
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Perhaps. But everything I've read suggests that it was over 20 minutes.

That's a pretty big inconsistency.

He had to do it fast
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Witness accounts describe no hurry or panic on Seung's part. There was no
running described. He was calm and methodical according to survivors,
moving from room to room and back again.

enough Police arrived to stop him
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I wonder how many police outside the building in riot gear pointing their
guns at windows it would take to get Seung to stop ?

No, its obvious that a major part of his plan (not to be altered) was
going out on his own terms.
 
Do you really think he killed himself?
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Yes, I do. In fact, I recently read an interview with one of the students who was lying on the floor playing dead (he had been shot but was alive) less than 5 feet from Cho when he killed himself. He said Cho stood there for a few seconds without making a sound, then there was a single gunshot and Cho's body crashed to the floor right beside him.


Everything else I've read up to this point suggests that the rampage went on for at the very least 20 minutes, and was likely closer to a half-hour.
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No, I don't think it was that long. I've been trying to put together a timeline based on interviews with cops and surviving students. We may never know exactly, but I think around 10 minutes is close.
 
Time it with a stop watch and you'll find 9 minutes is an awfully long time for the shooting to begin and go to it's horrible end.
 
The number of Police that I was on tv had to come from miles away. Some were even in the slow moving armored SWAT vehicles.

He could have crawled around in that building shooting fish in a barrel for nine minutes and got a high body count.
 
The number of Police that I was on tv had to come from miles away. Some were even in the slow moving armored SWAT vehicles.
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I'm pretty certain that most of the heavy firepower you saw on TV (in particular, the State Police SWAT units) didn't arrive until well AFTER the Norris Hall shooting was over. Remember, they were treating it as a routine domestic shooting prior to the Norris Hall shooting. It was the local police and deputies (and maybe some members of the Montgomery County Sheriff's office SWAT team) that scrambled across the campus when the report came in of shots fired in Norris Hall. The fight was long over by the time the heavy artillery arrived.
 
I wasn't aware that there was any real conclusive evidence that Seung committed the first two murders.
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That’s my understanding; everything I read through last Sunday had the police only saying the first 2 murders were committed with the same Glock 9mm found by Cho’s dead body, not saying Cho shot the first 2. Maybe they now have evidence placing Cho at the scene of the first 2 murders (fingerprints on door knobs?) and/or maybe the news writer is leaping to conclusions.

...exactly how were the police able to definitively say that all the shots occurred in "nine minutes"
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Well, a survivor is quoted in the paper as saying he called 911 just after the shooting started, and left the phone on (other people have posted here saying they heard the 911 tape on the news and they could hear the shots.) 911 tapes have the time encoded. Also police radio tapes keep track of the time, and the NY Times is reporting the first cops who got the class room building immediately broke the chain on the doors with a shotgun, and they heard only one shot after that (presumly Cho’s sucude shot.) Most police departments have a policy of radioing in anytime an officer fires, as soon as possible. The same NYT story says the cops radioed in when they found Cho’s body. So I’m guessing they are getting the 9 minutes from the 911 and/or police radio tapes.

The NYT stories are here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/us/22norris.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/17/us...G_GRAPHIC.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/us...er&oref=slogin

(May need to register for some of these.)

Another interesting bit of information is the claim of "more than" 170 shots.
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I’m guessing the cops recovered more than 170 shell casings so far.

Why is what this guy was thinking (or what he said) more important than what he did?
Will his motive makes his crime more or less heinous? Is it more "understandable" if he was picked on, or not hugged enough? Does it lessen the impact or the horrendous nature of it? Just curious.
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Figuring out why is part of fitting all the pieces together to be reasonably sure Cho was the one and only murderer in this case. If something does not fit, it may mean there is one or more other people involved (maybe egging Cho on?) who need to be found (for both justice and preventive purposes.)
 
They've probably tallied up the shell casings... but also the mags. Apparently, he had 17 mags on him. He had a Walther P22 and a Glock. Minimum magazine size for both is 10 rounds. Chances are that he may've had high-cap magazines. They find 17 empty mags, it's logical to assume that he both loaded all mags to full capacity and fired off at least 170 rounds.
 
I still have trouble wrapping my mind around the fact that the police couldn't track down and stop this guy in under 10 minutes:scrutiny: They were on campus they knew right where the guy was. They say it took them 5 minutes to get through the chained doors, maybe its just me but that seems like more time than it should take. They also claim it took 3 minutes to get the building where this guy was, I know its a big campus but didn't any of them have cars?

Maybe I'm completely wrong it just seems like this could have been handled more swiftly. I could understand if the police weren't already on campus, but the fact that they were just makes it seem a little strange. Even if one or two officers could have made it through a window or something they could have at the very least kept the guy pinned down, or better yet dropped the lunatic. Granted I'm not cop or anything and wasn't there so I can ony speculate.
 
"They also claim it took 3 minutes to get the building where this guy was, I know its a big campus but didn't any of them have cars? "

Maybe they weren't in their cars. Maybe they had to leave the building they were in and run to their cars. Then after the drive (a half mile if they went cross country across the Drillfield) they had to run from their cars to Norris. It's not like it's a straight shot with parking right at the front door. I dunno, why don't we wait and see the final report. Things like how many shots it took to break through the chained doors. I don't know yet what kind of chains he used. Or locks.

"this could have been handled more swiftly."

We have the luxury of knowing which floor he was on and which rooms he'd been in and how many shooters there were - one. I don't know how much info the officers on the scene had. Maybe nothing more than "shots fired."

I remember when Williams Hall was occupied by students during the Vietnam protests. The State Police had a Mayflower semi backed up to the rear door and had to literally pull the doors off the building before they could herd the students into the trailer. Then somebody opened the side door on the trailer (the side door was outside the perimeter they'd established) and let a bunch of them escape. So much for swarms of State Troopers being able to lock down a campus.

John
 
Granted I'm not cop or anything and wasn't there so I can ony speculate.
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nwilliams, perhaps you should make some attempt to re-create the police efforts before you speculate. What "seems" like a long time to you isn't really relevant unless you've got at least some factual basis to back it up.
 
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If they knew what set him off, they might be able to figure out where his plans all started.
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Why do we care? Of what value is any speculation (and EVERYTHING stated as fact will, in fact, be pure speculation).
 
The guy was crazy. It doesn't matter what set him off unless you're into morbid curiosity. Any reason he had was not based on rational thinking.

I would not expect the police to charge in feet first with the possibility of multiple shooters. They do need time to asses the situation. By the time they figured out what was going on it was probably over.
 
Thats what I mean. All of those cops that were shown on tv were not chicken ****s that were afraid to enter the building. They got there too late to do anything.
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I wouldn't say this. The police were already on campus and responded pretty fast to Norris Hall, in fact much faster than if they hadn't been around due to the first shooting. It didn't help that the killer chained the doors.

However, what it definitely reflects is even if you have a full SWAT team two minutes away.... a whacko with a pistol is still going to do damage. The only hope for these students that day (or at the next college shooting) would be a fellow student with CCW...
 
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