Killer got clips for gun on EBay

The Virginia Tech killer went on EBay to buy ammunition magazines for one of the types of guns he used in his rampage, a spokesman for the auction site confirmed yesterday. Meanwhile, Monday’s victims were eulogized from Virginia to as far away as Egypt.

As investigators tried to understand the motives behind Monday’s killings, friends and relatives of Emily Hilscher and Ryan Clark — the first two students killed — honored them yesterday at services in Virginia and Georgia. Services also were held for students Reema Samaha and Rachael Elizabeth Hill, two of the 30 persons Seung-hui Cho killed at Norris Hall, a classroom building where he committed suicide.

More than 1,800 people gathered at a Chantilly church yesterday to remember Miss Samaha.

In Lincoln, R.I., about 100 people memorialized Daniel Patrick O’Neil, 22, a first-year graduate student in environmental engineering.

In Egypt, hundreds of mourners wailed and chanted yesterday as they walked with a green wooden coffin in the funeral procession for a graduate student killed in the Virginia Tech massacre.

Earlier, Waleed Mohammed Shaalan’s body arrived aboard an Egypt Air flight from New York. His father and uncle accompanied the body as it was transported to his home village in the northern Nile delta province of Sharqiya for a traditional Muslim funeral.

Mr. Shaalan, 32, had been at Virginia Tech on a scholarship since August studying for a Ph.D. in civil engineering. A day before the massacre, he called home and told his family he intended to visit Egypt next month to bring his wife and 15-month-old son back with him to Virginia.

The graduate student was credited with distracting gunman Cho to save the life of a fellow student during the rampage.

Using the name blazers5505 on the Internet, Cho bought two 10-round magazines for the Walther P22 — one of two types of handguns used in the massacre of 32 persons. The magazines were purchased March 22 from a gun shop in Idaho.

“It’s apparent that he purchased the empty magazine clips,” EBay spokesman Hani Durzy said. “They’re similar to what could be purchased in any sporting goods store around the country.”

On EBay and affiliated sites, Cho also sold several books with violent themes, tickets to Hokies football games, and a graphics calculator that contained several games.

“The calculator was used for less than one semester then I dropped the class,” he wrote.

Cho’s EBay feedback rating from other users was 98.5 percent. Only one person gave him a negative rating.

On the EBay-affiliated Web site half.com, several books were listed for sale under the screen name blazers5505.

They include “Men, Women, and Chainsaws” by Carol J. Clover, a book that explores gender in the modern horror film. The publisher’s note reads: “Do the pleasures of horror movies really begin and end in sadism?”

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