School Shooting Suspect Identified As 23-Year-Old Student

 They may never have a real motive, but authorities now have a name.

They identified 23-year-old Cho Seung-Hui as the suspect in Monday’s horrific school shooting at Virginia Tech. Thirty-three people, including the gunman, were killed in two separate attacks two hours apart on the campus.

Cho, from South Korea, was an undergrad in his senior year at V.T. An English major, he was living on campus at Harper Residence Hall.

“He was a loner, and we’re having difficulty finding information about him,” school spokesperson Larry Hincker said.

Police, speaking at a press conference Tuesday, said they’d recovered a firearm from the scene, and after conducting tests they determined that the same weapon was used in both shootings.

Speaking anonymously because the information hadn’t been made public, one law enforcement official said Cho’s fingerprints were found on the guns. The weapons’ serial numbers had apparently been filed off, however the official said the student’s backpack contained a receipt for the purchase of a Glock 9mm handgun.

Col. Steve Flaherty, superintendent of the Virginia State Police, said it appeared likely Cho was the shooter in both attacks.

“There’s no evidence of any accomplice at either event, but we’re exploring the possibility,” he said.

As the town of Blacksburg, Va. struggled to cope with the unimaginable events that unfolded on the campus the day before, police continued to investigate what could have prompted the violence.

Solemn messages emerged from a church service held in the wake of the shootings, as one woman prayed “for Ryan and Emily and for those whose names we do not know.”

Another grief-stricken resident of the normally tranquil town added, “For all the children in our community who are afraid.”

The deadly day began just after 7am, on the fourth floor of the West Ambler Johnston coed dormitory. Two people were fatally shot there, and police were still investigating the murders when shots rang out at Norris Hall, on the other side of the campus, two hours later.

The gunman, carrying two handguns and loaded down with ammunition, apparently chained some of the doors from the inside, and opened fire. He shot and killed 30 people before fatally shooting himself in the head. Fifteen others were hurt, many of them seriously. They’re in hospital and officials are saying that their injuries, though grave, aren’t life-threatening.

Students hurled themselves from windows as the bullets began to fly, as members of the faculty attempted to carry the wounded out of the building.

Alec Calhoun, a 20-year-old student, described the sound of the gunfire as “an enormous hammer.”

“I must’ve been the eighth or ninth person who jumped, and I think I was the last,” said Calhoun, of Waynesboro, Va. He landed in a bush and ran.

SWAT teams arrived on the scene and scoured the campus for the shooter. One student caught the sound of bullets being fired on a cell phone camera.

Fellow student Erin Sheehan reportedly saw the gunman and she described him as “just a normal-looking kid, Asian, but he had on a Boy Scout-type outfit. He wore a tan button-up vest and this black vest, maybe it was for ammo or something.”

School President Charles Steger said everyone at the school was “shocked and indeed horrified” by what had happened. He may face some difficult questions in the next few days about whether administration did enough to warn students following the first shooting.

“I think the university has blood on their hands because of their lack of action after the first incident,” said Billy Bason, an 18-year-old student.

But Steger said authorities gave them the impression that the dorm shooting was an isolated incident and that the gunman had fled. There was word of another ‘person of interest’ police spoke to following the first shooting, but there’s no indication that individual is still being actively investigated in connection with the events.

“We had no reason to suspect any other incident was going to occur,” he said.

“We can only make decisions based on the information you had at the time. You don’t have hours to reflect on it.”

Officials painstakingly went out of their way on Tuesday to back him up.  

“I think it’s important to note that yesterday morning President Steger and his staff and … law enforcement made the right decisions based on the best information that they had available at the time,” assures State Secretary for Public Safety John Marshall

Among the dead are professors Liviu Librescu and Kevin Granata, and student Ryan Clark.

It’s also now being reported that a Canadian is among the deceased. Nova Scotia native Jocelyne Couture-Nowak taught French at the school’s foreign languages department and is said to be among the victims.

“She was one of three mothers who were really the founders of the school,” said Richard Landry, a spokesperson with the francophone school board in the province.

“She gave a lot of importance to French education.”

The Virginia Tech shooting made grim history Monday as it became the deadliest shooting rampage in U.S. history. It surpassed 1991’s shooting in Killeen Texas, when George Hennard drove into a Luby’s Cafeteria and shot 23 people to death before killing himself.

What do we know about the killer?