More sites locked before Tech alert

The story of April 16, 2007 first of three parts (related documents linked)

His Hokie Passport keycard wasn't coded to let him in the dorm where, the year before, he'd tried to kindle a relationship with a girl from his high school. But his behavior then had been so bizarre -- he stood in the fourth-floor hallway with sunglasses on and a hood over his head -- that she'd called the police.

His name was Seung-Hui Cho.

At sunrise, April 16, 2007, he had returned.

Nobody will likely ever know what, exactly, drove Cho to kill 32 students and professors that morning before turning the gun on himself. An archive of Tech documents to be released this month, under a settlement with victims and families, sheds little light on Cho.

But the records show Tech officials -- more than admitted earlier -- secured their offices before even the initial vague alert to students about the first two shootings, a continuing Richmond Times-Dispatch investigation found.

Previously undisclosed Tech records, including e-mails, internal memos and officials' notes, show some of the actions taken at critical times:

• 8:52 a.m.: As top officials discussed when and how to warn the campus, one ordered the doors to the office suite theywere in to be locked. That was 34 minutes before the first campuswide alert about the shootings went out at 9:26.

• 8:45 a.m.: The same official told a Tech lobbyist in Richmond that a gunman was loose and one student was dead but asked her not to release the information.

• 9:06 a.m.: An assistant vice president asked counseling-center staff to keep news of the first shootings confidential.

• 8:25 a.m.: Police canceled the pickup of bank deposits, and at 9:05 stopped trash collection on part of campus.

None of this information was in the official state report on the Tech shootings.

. . .

Records drawn from West Ambler Johnston's electronic locks show Emily Hilscher arrived at 7:02 that morning, after boyfriend Karl Thornhill dropped her off and watched to be sure she made it in safely.

It was her first year at Tech; the 19-year-old from rural Rappahannock County used to call her mom when walking from her parking space across a dark campus to the dorm -- even though the two sometimes joked about the little ritual and what Beth Hilscher actually would be able to do if her daughter ran into a mugger.

Police are sure Cho didn't follow her in; a witness saw him use another entrance earlier.

Hilscher headed to her room on the fourth floor.

Cho did, too.

But why the fourth floor?

The continuing police investigation has amassed 300, 3-inch-thick files on the massacre but has no evidence of any link between Cho and Hilscher -- or, indeed, any connection with any victims that day.

But the fourth floor was the scene of one of Cho's at least 10 unsettling incidents with students and staff members at Tech. None was ever followed up beyond some suggestions that he receive counseling.

The best guess police can make is that Cho may have picked Hilscher's room because it was across from the elevator -- as was the room of Ryan Clark, a resident assistant on the hall.

Something Cho did that morning drew Clark's attention. Still in the underclothes he'd slept in, Clark came out to the hallway, leaving his door ajar.

Cho shot him by Hilscher's door, just opposite.

One shot. Fatal.

Then he shot Hilscher, standing at the far end of the door by the desk and bed of her absent roommate. She'd changed into a T-shirt and pajama bottoms. That single shot, too, would prove fatal.

Cho stepped past Clark's body, and down the hallway to a stairwell.

It was about a quarter after seven.

. . .

Cho made it back to his dorm, about 500 feet away, by 7:17, electronic lock records show.

At 7:20, a West Ambler Johnston resident called campus police, using a non-emergency line, to relay a report of a loud noise that sounded like someone had fallen out of bed.

Nobody apparently recognized the sound of two shots from the 9 mm Glock.

The rescue squad sent an ambulance at 7:22, and a police patrolman met the medics at the dorm about 7:25.

They went up to the fourth floor at 7:27, where they found Clark and Hilscher, police records show. Clark was dead, and Hilscher was dying.

Within a minute, the police officer radioed and said he needed a supervisor. The rescue squad sent a second ambulance.

Tech Police Chief Wendell Flinchum learned of the shooting at 7:40, while changing in the police station locker room. He tried several times to call his boss, then-Executive Vice President James Hyatt, before reaching someone in his office at 7:57.

Word had already reached Associate Vice President Edward F.D. Spencer. At 7:30, a West Ambler Johnston housekeeper called a friend in Spencer's building to say a student had been slain.

Spencer in turn told Student Affairs Vice President Zenobia Hikes before walking to the dorm to investigate.

Seven-thirty would turn out to be a critical time. The official state investigation would report that police were getting a lead on a possible suspect at this time -- reassuring, if wrong, information that the gunman was off campus.

That two senior Tech officials knew as early as 7:30 -- that is, before even the police chief -- was never disclosed before university leaders mentioned it in private briefings to victims and families last fall. Those briefings were required under the same legal settlement mandating the public archive.

The official state investigation reported that at 7:30 police began interviewing a friend of Hilscher's who told officers in passing that Hilscher and her Radford University boyfriend enjoyed shooting. Police concluded -- prematurely, the state investigation found -- that the boyfriend was involved and focused their efforts on finding him.

The investigation's timing of the interview echoes a timeline written by Tech spokesman Larry Hincker the night of April 16. By 7:30, Hincker wrote, "Investigators were following up on leads concerning a person of interest in relation to the double homicide."

It wasn't until last fall's briefing to victims and families that police disclosed the interview didn't start until 8:16.

The official state account says Tech officials delayed warning the campus because they thought from soon after the shooting that there was a suspect who was off campus.

But that wasn't so.

Hincker says he can't remember where he got the information about the police interview. He said it was quickly corrected in an online posting of the timeline, but a member of his staff repeated the 7:30 time in a chronology she prepared shortly before the state investigation panel met.

Tech President Charles W. Steger, leading the group of top Tech officials discussing the warning, later said he knew there was a "person of interest" -- not quite a suspect -- at 8:40.

Hincker and Flinchum have said a "be-on-the-lookout" alert for Hilscher's boyfriend was issued at about that time.

Though Tech told Radford University police, that 8:40 alert didn't come in time for them to reach Hilscher's boyfriend in an hourlong 8 a.m. class. Nor could police reach the boyfriend by phone, though Hilscher's roommate and the roommate's boyfriend contacted him just before he headed into his 9 a.m. class.

By 8 a.m., however, the continuing and professional education center had already locked its doors.

One employee there learned from her mother, working at West Ambler Johnston, about the shooting.

About the same time, Ralph Byers, Tech's director of government relations, e-mailed Associate Provost S.K. De Datta to say he was too busy to talk about a program because "we are in an emergency situation." He didn't elaborate.

Police scrambled to the scene. By 8:03, the first of 10 Tech and Blacksburg officers reported they were on their way to West Ambler Johnston.

The dispatch of Blacksburg police spread news of the shooting to the town, if not to Tech students. Two of the Blacksburg officers were school-resource officers and their departure to West Ambler Johnston led Montgomery County school officials to lock students and staff in their Blacksburg-area schools.

By 8:10 a.m., word reached Steger, who called Flinchum.

Flinchum told Steger a student was dead, another was injured, and that there was no weapon on the scene, the chief disclosed to victims and families in the private briefings. The lack of a weapon, and the bloody footprints several family members said Flinchum told them he'd mentioned, meant the shooter was at large.

The police chief also told families he did not recommend that Steger close the campus. He said he felt there was no imminent threat. Flinchum said he didn't recall if Steger asked if he should secure the campus.

. . .

Cho's suite-mates heard him get up early that morning, but barely noticed. Karan Grewal had pulled an all-nighter and was in the bathroom about 5 a.m. when he heard Cho. His suite-mates didn't notice Cho's departure that morning or his return to his room more than two hours later.

But a lot of things about Cho barely registered. He hardly spoke to his suite-mates.

"I would notice a lot of times, like, I would come in the room and he'd be just kind of like sitting at his desk, just staring at nothing. It seemed a little odd," suite-mate Joseph E. Aust recalled.

Cho's silence was almost total. Worried teachers struggled to find ways for him to get around having to speak in class, hoping they could gently coax him out of what they saw as a paralyzing silence, so he could speak up in class discussions.

But sometimes, he did break the silence.

Tomorrow: Cho's troubles at Tech

Contact David Ress at (804) 649-6051 or .