Virginia Tech Shooting, An Event That Changed Lives Forever

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Victims of the attack

Carley Stone, Staff Writer

April 16, 2007, was a horrific day for the students at Virginia Tech. A young man by the name of Seung-Hui Cho was a 23-year-old senior at this college. Classmates and professors viewed him as a “strange” kid with little to no friends. He was a loner with a history of mental health issues. His English professor had concerns after Cho wrote two violent and gruesome plays that had to do with death. That awful and fearful Monday morning, Cho opened fire on the campus. This went down in history as being the worst school shootings in America as of 2022, passing Columbine and Sandy Hook shootings.

The very first thing Cho did was write a note that said “you got me to do this”. He left it in his dorm room. Around 7:15 a.m is when the shooting started. The first two people he shot and killed were a female freshman and a male resident assistant dormitory. He was armed with a 9-millimeter handgun and a 22-caliber handgun with hundreds of rounds of ammunition. According to history.com, around 9:40 a.m Cho chained and locked several main doors around to school and went room to room shooting students. In just ten minutes he had killed 32 people. 27 students and 5 faculty members. He also wounded over a dozen people. After he decided that that was enough, he took his own life by shooting himself in the head. He died instantly on campus.

Cho’s parents are Kim Hyang-im and Seung-Tae Cho. Cho’s parents cut themselves off from the world. They did not want to be seen by the public for fear of violence and humiliation. The FBI has had some communication with them but they have not been heard by the public since the incident in 2007. Not even the Cho’s own family has heard from them.

The victims’ families and friends were left shocked and heartbroken. I can’t imagine how the students that survived feel. They must be traumatized. I have noticed that every school shooter is the same, they either had one friend or no friends, they were quiet, and they were perceived as strange or weird. There is a pattern here… you don’t see a happy, smart, popular, lovable person shoot up a school. Not every quiet student is going to shoot up a school but if you see one talk to them, you might make a new friend.

In Loving Memory of