I wonder why Cho Seung-Hui could be driven that crazy that he mindlessly killed 32 people, the largest campus massacre.
Some urge in me wanted to find out more info on this guy, trying to gain a clue. I tried to look his name up on the site of the university… Then I wondered how you must feel if you are a) South-Korean, b) named “Seung” and c) are studying at the same university, like these 14 students (none of them seung-hui but all of them seung). Maybe they experience what Wayne Chiang found out when 80.000 people visited his weblog.
Boing Boing explains what it means. I wondered before if it was related to Counterstrike.
Several Korean youths who knew Cho Seung Hui from his high school days said he was a fan of violent video games, particularly Counterstrike, a hugely popular online game published by Microsoft, in which players join terrorism or counterterrorism groups and try to shoot each other using all types of guns.
On ABC News we read that he was a loner and a very very weird guy, wearing dark sunglasses indoors and writing stories like “a 13-year-old boy who accuses his stepfather of pedophilia, and ends with the boy’s death.” or “I wanna watch him bleed like the way he made us kids bleed,” which was already indicated as pretty weird and possibly dangerous. His plays can be downloaded on AOL., they are called “Richard Mc.Beef” and “Mr. Brownstone”.
this makes me wonder:
a) if he was pointed out as weird and possibly dangerous long before why did noone take action?
b) there were 2 bomb threats by him the week before, why did noone take action?
c) there were hours before the first killing and the mass killing, why did noone take action?
d) how can a kid that crazy, taking anti-depressa get access to a glock 9 mm, and a Walther .22 and a bunch of ammo? crazy!
p.s. Liviu Librescu, who survived the Holocaust, later made a big carreer and made it in the Who is Who in the world and then gave his life to protect his students from this killer made me wonder if I would have the guts to do the same in such a situation. What a hero.
And a photo was posted of some NUT of the local school paper who wanted to go back into the school but was arrested by the police.
Update: the guy send a multi-media package to NBC… before the 2nd shooting. It includes video’s and photographs….mass killing in the Internet Era…. Pffff….. I think he was trying to make meme out of himself.
On of the pictures he send in his manifesto is the 88, the sign meaning Heil Hitler, which he calls the number of the Anti Terrorist. The picture are 2 seperate 8´s, but can also be seen as a single 3-d 8. See more of his manifesto here. He writes about two child rapers and other weird stuff. “you could have been great. I could have been great. Ask yourself what you did to me to have made me clean the slate”. For now NBC has only release 5 from the 21 pages of the manifesto.
Also see the wikipedia entry