Virginia Tech shooting

On the morning of April 16, 2007, Seung-Hui Cho, a 23-year-old senior at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) in Blacksburg, Virginia, carried out two shooting attacks on campus. Around 7:15 a.m., Cho entered a dormitory room in West Ambler Johnston Hall and fatally shot 19-year-old freshman Emily Jane Hilscher. A resident assistant, 22-year-old Ryan C. Clark, responded to the gunshots and was also killed. Hilscher died at a Roanoke hospital roughly three hours later. Cho then returned to his own dorm room, changed clothes, deleted his computer files, and mailed a package of writings and video recordings to NBC News from a nearby post office.

Approximately two hours after the first attack, around 9:40 a.m., Cho entered Norris Hall, an academic building, carrying two semi-automatic pistols — a .22-caliber Walther P22 and a 9mm Glock 19 — along with nearly 400 rounds of ammunition. He chained the building's main entrance doors shut and left a note falsely warning of a bomb. He then moved through classrooms on the second floor, shooting students and faculty in several rooms over roughly ten minutes. Victims included professors G. V. Loganathan, Jamie Bishop, Kevin Granata, Jocelyne Couture-Nowak, and Liviu Librescu, a Holocaust survivor who held a classroom door shut so his students could escape through windows before he was fatally shot. Student Matthew La Porte was killed attempting to confront Cho. In total, 30 people were killed at Norris Hall in addition to Cho, who fatally shot himself as police reached the second floor of the building. Seventeen people were wounded by gunfire, and six others were injured jumping from windows to escape.

The Virginia Tech Review Panel, an eight-member state-appointed panel convened by then-Governor Tim Kaine, later documented Cho's history of selective mutism and severe depression diagnosed in eighth grade, his special education support through high school, and a 2005 finding by a Virginia special justice that declared him mentally ill and ordered outpatient treatment following stalking complaints from two female students. Because he was not involuntarily committed to inpatient care, existing law did not bar him from purchasing firearms. The panel's August 2007 report criticized university administrators and police for delays in warning the campus after the first shooting, and identified gaps in mental health law, privacy statutes, and information-sharing that left Cho's condition unaddressed while he was a student. The panel concluded that Cho bore ultimate responsibility for his actions.

The shooting prompted changes to Virginia law closing loopholes that had allowed people adjudicated mentally unsound to purchase handguns undetected, and led to federal legislation strengthening the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, signed by President George W. Bush on January 5, 2008. The incident drew international attention, including statements of condolence from numerous world leaders, and prompted widespread review of campus safety and mental health policies at universities in the United States and elsewhere.