Tech to release more records from April 16th

Richmond Times Dispatch
Published: July 24, 2008

Updated 3:47 p.m.

By SUE LINDSEY
Associated Press Writer

ROANOKE, Va. (AP) - Virginia Tech should release all of its records in the April 2007 campus shootings that left 33 people dead so that others can learn from the events, family members of victims said Thursday.

University officials said Wednesday that they were partially reversing their decision to withhold certain documents related to the shooting rampage by student Seung-Hui Cho.

Under an $11 million settlement with the victims’ families, the school promised to set up a public archive with key facts about the shootings.

“I think there’s so much to learn about the event that I don’t understand why Virginia Tech doesn’t release these, unless they’re worried about their image,” said Suzanne Grimes, whose son Kevin Sterne was among two dozen people injured

University spokesman Larry Hincker said the school will include in the archive some documents from an emergency meeting held by senior officials after two people were shot in a dormitory the morning of April 16, 2007. Those shootings occurred about 2½ hours before Cho killed 30 others in a classroom building, then took his own life.

Hincker said that the school will release Cho’s academic records, but not his health records. Police have said they did not intend to release 911 calls from that day, he said.

Families of victims will have first access to the archive, Hincker said, and it will be made public later.

Roger O’Dell, whose son Derek was injured, praised the release of some documents but said, “The whole story aches to be told.”

Holly Sherman, whose daughter Leslie was killed, questioned why any of those records should be withheld.

“What are they hiding?” she said. “It just begs more questions, is what it does.”

Sherman and Grimes said it appeared that Virginia Tech was not honoring its part in the settlement, in which families of victims agreed not to sue the school.

“It’s clearly written that any material related to April 16 would be released to the public,” Grimes said.

Two families who did not agree to the settlement have filed notices of possible lawsuits.

All but one set of notes from the administrators’ meeting and records about Cho were withheld from the university’s response to a Richmond Times-Dispatch request for documents submitted to the families’ lawyers. The request was made under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act.

A review of documents released suggested a possible connection between Cho and the fourth floor of the West Ambler Johnston Hall, the site of the first two killings, the newspaper said. A woman who complained to police in 2005 that Cho had stalked her lived there.

The newspaper’s review also showed that one door to Norris Hall, the building where most of the shootings occurred, was unlocked. Hincker said that door was an underground connection to an adjoining building. Police officers were delayed getting into the building because the exterior doors were chained.

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Updated 12:51 p.m.

By SUE LINDSEY
Associated Press Writer

ROANOKE, Va. (AP) - Virginia Tech should release all of its records in the April 2007 campus shootings that left 33 people dead so that others can learn from the events, family members of victims said Thursday.

University officials said Wednesday that they were partially reversing their decision to withhold certain documents related to the shooting rampage by student Seung-Hui Cho.

Under an $11 million settlement with the victims’ families, the school promised to set up a public archive with key facts about the shootings.

“I think there’s so much to learn about the event that I don’t understand why Virginia Tech doesn’t release these, unless they’re worried about their image,” said Suzanne Grimes, whose son Kevin Sterne was among two dozen people injured.

University spokesman Larry Hincker told the Richmond Times-Dispatch in an e-mail that the school will release some documents from an emergency meeting held by senior officials after two people were shot in a dormitory the morning of April 16, 2007. Those shootings occurred about 2½ hours before Cho killed 30 others in a classroom building, then took his own life.

Hincker said that the school will release Cho’s academic records, but not his health records. The school will also not release 911 calls from that day. Hincker was in a daylong meeting Thursday and did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment.

Holly Sherman, whose daughter Leslie was killed, questioned why any of those records should be withheld.

“What are they hiding?” she said. “It just begs more questions, is what it does.”

Sherman and Grimes said it appeared that Virginia Tech was not honoring its part in the settlement, in which families of victims agreed not to sue the school.

“It’s clearly written that any material related to April 16 would be released to the public,” Grimes said.

Two families who did not agree to the settlement have filed notices of possible lawsuits.

All but one set of notes from the administrators’ meeting and records about Cho were withheld from the university’s response to a Times-Dispatch request for documents submitted to the families’ lawyers. The request was made under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act.

A review of documents released suggested a possible connection between Cho and the fourth floor of the West Ambler Johnston Hall, the site of the first two killings, the newspaper said. A woman who complained to police in 2005 that Cho had stalked her lived there.

The newspaper’s review also showed that one door to Norris Hall, the building where most of the shootings occurred, was unlocked. Police officers were delayed getting into the building because several doors were chained.

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Original story 12:43 a.m.

Virginia Tech promised yesterday to make public some, if not all, records of the April 16, 2007, massacre that it previously planned to keep private.

Families of those who died in the shootings said they were upset by earlier statements that the university planned to keep documents about the tragedy out of a public archive it promised to set up.

They said a key element of their settlement with the state was a promise that records long kept secret would be opened to public scrutiny—particularly any about shooter Seung-Hui Cho and about actions of top university officials in the 2½ hours between Cho’s first two murders and the massacre at Norris Hall, where Cho killed 30 people and then himself.

“It is my understanding that much of the above will be in the settlement archive,” Tech spokesman Larry Hincker said in an e-mail yesterday, referring to those records.

That includes at least some documents of top Tech officials’ emergency Policy Group meeting on the morning of April 16—records that Hincker said last week were not to be in the public archive called for by the settlement.

It also will include Cho’s academic records but not his health records.

It will not include 911 calls from that day, Hincker said.

Families of the victims feel they’ve yet to get the full story about what happened that day, despite a state investigation last year.

“There are just too many open questions. They’ve not been fully open with us,” said Michael Pohle of Flemington, N.J., whose son, Michael, was killed. “It is spin city.”

The families said Tech’s apparent decision—now partly reversed—to withhold some documents particularly was upsetting.

“It feels like that is not what we agreed to in the settlement. That was the whole purpose, to get to the truth,” said Linda Gwaltney, stepmother of Matthew Gregory Gwaltney, a Thomas Dale High School graduate and magna cum laude engineering graduate of Tech, who was just weeks away from completing his graduate degree when he was killed.

“There’s a selfish reason, because we need to know what happened to our son,” she said. “But I think the public needs to know, too.”

All but one set of notes from the Policy Group and a box of records about Cho were withheld from the university’s response to a Richmond Times-Dispatch Freedom of Information Act request for documents submitted to the families’ lawyers.

The newspaper’s review last week of 20,000 pages of documents the university did release showed there was an unlocked door to Norris Hall on April 16—police unsuccessfully tried three doors Cho chained shut and had to shoot out a lock to get inside the building while the killings were going on.

The documents also suggest a connection Cho may have had with the fourth floor of West Ambler Johnston Hall, the site of his first two killings. The documents additionally disclosed that counseling center records about Cho were “inadvertently destroyed.”

Tech did not release to the families’ lawyers one key set of records—police radio calls on the day, which apparently prompted one administrator to lock down her offices before the Norris Hall shootings.

Douglas Fierberg, attorney for the families, said a key goal of the settlement was to make all the records of those days available in a public archive.

“They, and the general public, are entitled to understand fully the cause and circumstances surrounding this tragedy, if only so other lives can be spared by reducing the possibility of having the university’s and President [Charles W.] Steger’s mistakes repeated,” Fierberg said.

“The university should have nothing to fear from disclosure of the full truth, unless its current stance is based upon a need to hide the truth about the flawed decision-making of its most senior officials,” Fierberg said.

The families’ questions focus on the actions of the Policy Group and the Virginia Tech Police Department after the first two shootings, in West Ambler Johnston Hall. They also wonder whether university officials were careless about helping Cho before his final, deadly breakdown.

Among their key questions:

why the first disclosure of the shootings, roughly 2 hours after those deaths and 15 minutes before Cho started the massacre in Norris Hall, was edited to remove any mention that people died;
why top officials did not close the campus before people started arriving to begin a new week, as they might have been able to do if they acted quickly after the first shootings; and
whether police focused too much on a boyfriend of one of the first two victims and took too long to track him down.
“Will we get answers to the questions?” Pohle asked. “My expectation is we’ll get a lot of: ‘I don’t remembers,’ and ‘That’s not the issue.’”