BLACKSBURG, VA. — The 23-year-old student who went on a bloody rampage at Virginia Tech had prepared the attack for weeks -- buying two semiautomatic pistols and writing a dark, hate-filled rant in his dormitory room before setting out with a backpack of ammunition to kill students and teachers, authorities said Tuesday.
Seung-hui Cho, a child immigrant from South Korea who grew up in the Washington suburbs, was portrayed by fellow students and teachers as an insecure loner who ate by himself night after night, watched TV wrestling shows alone and, when spoken to, had little to say.
Well-known poet Nikki Giovanni, who taught him creative writing, observed him in the class with dark sunglasses and a ball cap jammed down over his face. He turned in assignments she found disturbing. Sometimes he snapped unwanted cellphone photos of classmates. Students stopped showing up for class, telling her, "The guy's really creepy." At one point she had guards stationed nearby.
Authorities continued Tuesday to assemble the pieces of Cho's life on the campus of 26,000 students near the Blue Ridge Mountains, but his motivation was still unclear. No link has been disclosed between Cho and any of the victims, and police continue to look for evidence that he first shot two students in a dorm before the bloodier attack 2 1/2 hours later, when he killed 30 more and himself, and injured more than two dozen.
"We're still following all these leads. There's a myriad of leads," said state Police Superintendent Col. Steven Flaherty. "There is a lot of evidence, and it's slow-moving."
Cho apparently had no friends or a girlfriend, said Joseph Aust, one of his five roommates. He wore a standard uniform -- blue jeans, T-shirt and maroon Virginia Tech hat, and kept only textbooks and a laptop computer. His one known passion was downloading music.
He hung no pictures, posters or decorations on his walls, and avoided conversations with his roommates and other students.
"He would just give one-word answers," Aust said.
But in recent weeks Cho's habits changed. He ventured out at night to the campus gym, lifting weights to beef up his skinny frame. He trimmed his hair into a military-style buzz cut.
Cho, a senior majoring in English, was normally in bed by 9 each night, up again by 7 in the morning. But he began rising earlier, sometimes by 5:30 a.m., to put in his contact lenses, take prescription pills and apply acne medicine.
