Seung Hui Cho

Seung-hui Cho's recent purchase of the two semiautomatic handguns used in the Virginia Tech rampage was done by the book and in accordance with Virginia's firearms laws. Cho bought one of the guns, a .22-caliber Walther P22, at JND Pawnbrokers in Blacksburg in February, a federal law enforcement official familiar with the investigation said.

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.

It was still dark at 5:30 a.m., when Karan Grewal bumped into his roommate in the bathroom of their suite in Virginia Tech's Harper Hall. Grewal had been up all night studying, but he knew better than to grumble to Seung-hui Cho. None of the guys in the suite talked to Cho. They'd tried, at first, but Cho never answered; he rarely responded even to a simple "Hi." His roommates figured he didn't speak much English.

The sense of shock and shame that has engulfed the Korean American community in the wake of the murderous Virginia Tech rampage may seem overdone to some, but its roots are familiar to many minorities. "My first thought when I heard initial reports [of the shootings] was 'Oh my God, I hope it's not a black person,' " African American commentator Earl Ofari Hutchinson said. "It's a visceral reaction, a reflection of this country's long history of typecasting all minorities."

In a chilling video made public Wednesday, Virginia Tech gunman Seung-hui Cho declared: "This didn't have to happen," likening himself to the Columbine killers and talking of his hatred for the wealthy. Cho mailed the package, which contained an 1,800-word diatribe and multiple photos of him aiming handguns at the camera, at 9:01 Monday morning.

A persecution complex. Paranoid schizophrenia. Psychotic depression, with both homicidal and suicidal characteristics. Severe bipolar disorder. Though no one can now diagnose Virginia Tech gunman Seung-Hui Cho, mental health experts who watched his videotaped message about Monday's rampage say there was evidence of all of those mental disorders. His desire to kill others as well as himself is "not an unusual combination for a school shooter," said Dr.

The oversized U.S. Postal Service envelope was addressed simply to "NBC," and might have been overlooked in the jumble of mail flooding into the television network's Rockefeller Center headquarters Wednesday if a sharp-eyed mail carrier hadn't noticed the return address: "Blacksburg, Va." The sender: "Ishmael." Those clues were enough to alarm the Postal Service employee, who flagged the mailroom when he dropped it off about 11 a.m.

NBC's decision to broadcast portions of Seung-hui Cho's angry rants triggered a storm of condemnation Thursday from viewers and victims' relatives, illuminating the treacherous middle ground between exposure and exploitation in a fast-moving news cycle.

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.

One question many people are asking after the shootings at Virginia Tech is how someone so deranged could have legally purchased firearms. The answer is twofold: Although the gunman, Seung-hui Cho, had been accused of harassing women, he had not been convicted of a crime. And although he was considered mentally ill, he had not been committed to a mental institution or declared mentally incapacitated.