Police Search Dorm and Duckpond

BLACKSBURG -- As state police prepare to release more information today about the Virginia Tech massacre, the investigation pressed on with dozens of officers searching the killer's dorm and the school's Duckpond.

Police expanded their search beyond killer Seung-Hui Cho's dormitory room to include the common kitchen, study and meeting rooms in Harper Hall, according to students who live there. Police were seen removing ceiling tiles as part of the search. They refused to reveal the object of the search.

More than 50 police academy trainees, deputies and the U.S. Marshals Service yesterday methodically searched the campus area near a creek and the Duckpond located within a half-mile of the sites where Cho killed 32 people and wounded 15 more.

Cho used 17 clips of ammunition to fire between 175 and 225 rounds, according to one law-enforcement source.

One question -- how a mentally troubled student could buy the two weapons he used in his rampage -- may be addressed by Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, who said yesterday that he will try to close the loophole that allowed that to happen.

The governor suggested that it might be possible to use his executive powers, instead of waiting for new legislation next winter, to require state police to include findings on an individual's mental disturbances in instant background checks for gun purchases.

"Hopefully, we can administratively address that," Kaine said.

Information on mental-health adjudications by a court "should be shared on the national database," Kaine said of the federal law prohibiting gun sales to the mentally disabled.

Cho, a Tech student who killed 32 students and professors before fatally shooting himself, had been found by a special justice to be a danger to himself and ordered to undergo outpatient psychiatric treatment.

Coincidentally, Virginia, unlike the majority of states, is active in reporting mental-health information, Kaine said.

"I don't know what the original thought was, that we would report based on involuntary commitments . . . but we wouldn't report based on orders to receive outpatient services," Kaine told a radio audience.

W. Gerald Massengill, the former state police superintendent named by Kaine to head commission to review the Tech massacre, said the federal and state laws may be incompatible.

Nevertheless, "based on what we know now . . . it's pretty clear he should not have been able to obtain a weapon," Massengill said during his appearance on the governor's monthly call-in radio show broadcast from the studios of WTOP in Washington.

Kaine and Massengill promised an expedited review.

Kevin Hall, the governor's press secretary, said later that the attorney general's office is researching the apparent disconnect between Virginia and federal laws.

Yesterday, Kaine also met privately in Northern Virginia with the Korean ambassador to the U.S. and leaders of the Korean-American community to discuss the slayings.

"There were about 100 people at the meeting," said Hall, who noted that "refreshingly, there has been no instance of a backlash" against Korean-Americans.

Cho's family moved to the United States from South Korea in 1992.

Kaine assured the community leaders that "no one holds them culpable for the acts" of one deranged person, Hall reported. The meeting was scheduled to foster the healing process in the aftermath of the killings.