We Can Learn to Prevent More Mass Killings

Seung Hui Cho gave plenty of warning signs of his violent suicidal explosion, long before he killed 32 fellow students and, faculty, and then himself, at Virginia Polytechnic Institute on April 17. Indeed, the day he was supposed to read a play for an English class critique, dozens of students stayed away. The teacher asked where everybody was. "They are afraid of Cho," came the answer from seven who dared show.

He so unnerved several female students by his practice of snapping photos of their legs under their desks they quit coming to class. In the English Department, where Cho was a major, eight professors formed what one called a "task force" to discuss how to deal with Cho and his violent writings.

Cho's behavior was threatening enough to cause a professor to take him out of class and tutor him separately in her office. She was so afraid she arranged with her assistant to call police immediately if she mentioned the name of a deceased professor. After he murdered 32 students and faculty and blew his own brains out, she told a TV interviewer, "I believe in student civil rights, but . . ."

In December 2005, police hauled him off, a judge signed an involuntary commitment order deeming him dangerous, and sent him to a Radford, Va., psychiatric hospital for evaluation. A doctor declared him mentally ill but not an "imminent threat," a Supreme Court term whose meaning the justices have never explained, and the judge released him.

At present no law requires a person judged dangerous to go to counseling. Moreover there is precious little evidence counseling can "help." A defining symptom of the paranoid personality is that he does not think there is anything wrong with himself. He thinks the rest of the world is "sick," and needs correcting, by gunfire or bomb if necessary. As his megalomania and paranoia grow, his rage builds against us all until he explodes in a bloody mess. In most mass murders red flags aplenty signaled disaster ahead. Usually people had complained to police, and many mass killers had police records.