On April 16, 2007, on the campus of Virginia Tech, twenty-three-year-old student Seung-Hui Cho shot and killed thirty-two people and injured numerous others before turning his gun on himself. Through interviews with psychologists, professors, and key witnesses, Massacre at Virginia Tech delves into the mystery of how Cho, a young man with no criminal history, perpetrated the worst gun rampage in the history of the United States.

While no links between Cho and his victims nor any clear motive have been found, Cho’s personal history included accusations of stalking by two female students and a period spent at a mental health facility in 2005. Though the “video manifesto” Cho sent to NBC included claims of a life of torment and shared his desire to punish a decadent community, there is no existing evidence that he was ever victimized at school or at home. Commentary from assorted experts and witnesses helps piece together the puzzle of Cho as a man who bore strong similarities to many other mass killers, and who may have suffered from a combination of grandiosity, bipolar depression, and schizophrenia.

In the aftermath of such attacks, questions inevitably arise about whether these tragedies could have been prevented. What authority does a university have to mandate counseling for a troubled student and what issues of privacy prevail?

American Psychological Association, 2009