BLACKSBURG, VA. — Weary with grief and struggling to explain their failure to monitor Seung-hui Cho upon his release from a mental hospital 16 months ago, the leaders of Virginia Tech sought Thursday to begin the healing process for their shattered university.
His voice cracking and his eyes glistening, the man who has become the public face of the school -- an earnest, silver-haired administrator named Larry Hincker -- said the time had come for his beloved university to move forward after four days of almost unbearable pain.
"We cannot let this horror define Virginia Tech," Hincker said, stepping up to a bank of microphones at a campus inn just hours after helping fellow officials parry blistering questions from reporters about how the school dealt with a troubled killer-to-be.
"We are going to do whatever we can to try to get this place back on its feet again, while we remember what took place and do what we can to prevent anything like that happening again in the United States," he said, drawing sustained applause from the same journalists who had bombarded him with questions.
Hincker's emotional appeal came on a day when Virginia's police superintendent stood at the same microphones to criticize NBC News and other media outlets for airing and publishing graphic, profane and disturbing videos and photographs of Cho. Col. Steven Flaherty said the publicity only served to draw ill-deserved attention to a gunman the families of the victims wanted to forget.
"We're rather disappointed in the editorial decision to broadcast these disturbing images," Flaherty said in a rich Southern drawl. He told the victims' families: "I'm sorry that you all were exposed to these images."
Second-guessing
At a contentious news conference hours earlier, school officials acknowledged that no one from the university had monitored Cho upon his release from a mental facility 16 months ago. They said the courts were responsible for ensuring that Cho followed up with required counseling after he was deemed a danger to himself and possibly others.
Court and psychiatric authorities are not required to notify school officials when a student is released from a mental facility, they said. And after Cho's release in December 2005, Virginia Tech officials said, the school received no complaints that he was violent or dangerous.
