A signal of deadly violence to come

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The shooting rampage that left 32 Virginia Tech students and faculty members dead this week was inevitable, carried out by a sullen loner with a long history of problems who had been signaling an impending deadly outburst at the southern Virginia school for some time.

Cho Seung-hui, a 23-year-old undergraduate English major and South Korean national who coldly and calculatingly killed his victims, was unashamed as he confessed in a bizarre video delivered as part of a "box of death" package to NBC News in New York. He proclaimed Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold martyrs on par with Jesus Christ. He said he had "only one option."

"The decision was yours. Now you have blood on your hands that you can never wash off," Cho said in the self-made video, although he never explained why he targeted the students and staff members for death. "I didn't have to do it. I could have left. I could have fled. But now I am no longer running."

Cho and his problems were not unknown to university officials or to those in the community, including a Virginia Tech police officer who wrote in a Dec. 13, 2005, commitment order -- after Cho had stalked two women on campus -- that the student was "mentally ill" and represented "an imminent danger" to himself and others.

And while Virginia Tech police obtained a temporary detention order from a Montgomery County, Va., magistrate judge for Cho to be evaluated by a public mental health agency, Special Justice Paul M. Barnett later approved outpatient treatment for the young man -- agreeing that he was mentally ill but that he represented a danger only to himself.

The ruling tied the university's hands because Cho had not formally violated the school's academic honors system or its student-life policy, which prohibits "words or acts" that constitute "abusive conduct" that "demeans, intimidates, threatens or otherwise interferes with another person's rightful actions or comfort."

The ruling gave Cho time to write invective-filled epistles against "rich kids," "debauchery" and "deceitful charlatans"; compose obscenity-laced poetry and plays that frightened his classmates and professors; prepare his hateful package to NBC; and purchase two handguns he would use to kill unsuspecting classmates and faculty members.

"Your Mercedes wasn't enough, you brats," Cho declared in the video, wearing a military-style vest and backward baseball cap. "Your golden necklaces weren't enough, you snobs. Your trust funds wasn't enough. Your vodka and cognac wasn't enough. All your debaucheries weren't enough. Those weren't enough to fulfill your hedonistic needs. You had everything.

"You had a hundred billion chances and ways to have avoided today," he said. "But you decided to spill my blood."

Cho, who had lived in Northern Virginia as a legal permanent resident alien for the past 15 years, left one particularly menacing note in his Harper Hall dorm room, warning that the end was near and there was a deed still to be done, law-enforcement authorities familiar with the document said.