Police Response Becomes Focus for Inquiry

An independent investigation was announced yesterday into the slow response of the university and police in the Virginia Tech massacre.

The governor of Virginia, Tim Kaine, who addressed a memorial service at the campus on Tuesday, warned against snap judgments. He said he had "nothing but loathing for those who take the tragedy and make it political".

The inquiry, led by Gerald Massengill, a former head of Virginia state police, will focus on the two-hour gap between the first shooting, which claimed two lives, and the second, which claimed 31, and why neither the police nor university officials closed down the campus after the first incident.

It will also examine whether the university police and officials should have been monitoring the killer Cho Seung-hui more closely over the past 18 months after alarm was raised about his behaviour. Mr Massengill will look at whether there was sufficient sharing of information about Cho between the academic staff and officials and with the police, and whether privacy laws were too heavily weighted in Cho's favour.

Few involved have so far called for the inquiry to look into the state's relaxed gun laws, in particular why Cho was allowed to buy handguns, given he had been in a mental institution.

The review is being set up at the request of the university's president, Charles Steger, who has taken the brunt of the criticism so far.

The police removed two computers from Cho's room, a digital camera, notebooks, and a chain and combination lock. He chained the main doors at Norris hall, a teaching block used mainly by engineering students. The police said yesterday they had completed forensic work at the hall, where Cho shot 30 staff and students before shooting himself. It will remain closed for the remainder of the academic session. One of the many unanswered questions about Cho is why, after killing Emily Hilscher and Ryan Clark in their dormitory, he chose Norris hall for his shooting spree.

One reason why police failed to close down the university was because they initially assumed the two dormitory killings were a domestic incident and began searching for Ms Hilscher's boyfriend, Karl Thornhill. They were questioning him when news came through of the shootings at Norris hall.

The Korean Yonhap news agency said yesterday that Cho's parents, who live in Centreville, Virginia, had been taken to hospital suffering from shock rather than from a suicide attempt, as other Korean media had been reporting.