The Virginia Tech University student who shot 32 people to death on campus this week mailed a package of images and video messages to NBC News during his rampage.
After killing two students in a dorm on the Blacksburg, Virginia, campus on April 16, Cho Seung Hui, 23, sent the package, NBC News said in a statement today. He went on to kill 30 more in a classroom building before taking his own life.
One image released by NBC shows Cho wearing a backward black baseball cap and glaring at the camera while extending two pistols in gloved hands. NBC News broadcast a video tonight showing Cho delivering a profanity-laced tirade.
“When the time came I did it. I had to,” Cho says in the video. He also says, “You forced me into a corner and gave me only one option. The decision was yours.”
The package was sent from a Blacksburg post office at 9:01 a.m. according to the envelope, NBC said. Emergency calls about the first shooting were made around 7:15 a.m., authorities said, and the second round of firing came around 9:45.
At least nine people remain hospitalized with injuries from this week’s shooting, including five in intensive-care units, a spokeswoman for HCA Inc.’s two regional hospitals said.
Cho’s mental state was questioned back in December 2005, when a Virginia magistrate judge ruled he might be a danger to himself or others, Associated Press reported. He was taken to Carilion New River Valley Medical Center after his second run-in with Virginia Tech police that semester over unwanted online messages to two women, university Police Chief Wendell Flinchum said in a news conference today in Blacksburg.
