Appalachian School of Law,
Columbine, Virginia Tech
Within hours of Cho’s slaughter I could see the
disturbing similarities between the law school and Tech shootings. Within days
those similarities became frightening parallels. I was so troubled that I wrote
an article for our local newspaper:
The Rappahannock Record April 26, 2007
“Virginia
Tech: Let the Cover-Up Begin”
The sad truth is that the terrible loss
of life at Virginia Tech could have been prevented if state and school
officials in Blacksburg would have learned the lessons from the shootings at
the Appalachian School of Law on January 16, 2002. The parallels between the
two tragedies are staggering.
Angela Dales, the mother of our
granddaughter, was the student killed at the law school. In the five years
since that tragedy we have repeatedly sought answers. But we have been met with
disingenuous expressions of sympathy followed by outright refusal to answer our
questions. The same will happen to the families of those lost at Virginia Tech.
Students, staff, and faculty warned law
school officials that the murderer, Peter Odighizuwa, was a threat and they
feared for their safety. The same is true at Virginia Tech—there were warnings
about Seung Hui Cho.
Five years ago, no alarm was sounded on
the second floor of the law school building after the initial shootings—an
alarm that might have saved Angela Dales’ life and prevented the wounding of
three other students. At Virginia Tech, over two hours lapsed between the first
shootings and the second. And, no alarms were sounded!
Court documents indicate that several
weeks before the law school shooting, female staff and faculty members—citing
Odighizuwa— expressed concern for their safety. The President of the
Appalachian School is said to have responded, “Oh you women and your hormones,
nothing will happen.” The President of Virginia Tech knew of the first shooting
and did nothing to immediately close or alert the campus. Both men should be
fired.
Both Peter Odighizuwa and Seung Hui Cho
had harassed fellow students and the schools knew about it.
Both Peter Odighizuwa and Seung Hui Cho
had been referred to mental facilities or were seeking psychiatric care, and
the schools knew about it.
The office of former Virginia Attorney
General Jerry Kilgore refused to help us get access to the investigation report
of a threatening e-mail Angela Dales received prior to the shooting. The same
will happen to Virginia Tech families when they turn to state officials for
help.
The Virginia Tech families will learn the
bitter truth that in dealing with these tragedies, all elected officials want
to do is plant a tree, put up a plaque, or adopt a bill commemorating the
shooting. None of them, Republican or Democrat, have the will or backbone to
really investigate the causes of the tragedy and propose laws, or enact
regulations, that will begin to deal with the prevention of these atrocities.
Since the horrible events on April 16th the phrase, “Let the healing begin” has been
repeated over and over again. What would be closer to reality is, “Let the
cover up begin.”
The sad truth is that when put to the
test, numerous elected officials and far too many members of the legal and law
enforcement professions show that our beliefs and values mean little or nothing
to them. Values such as honesty, courage, integrity—and justice— frequently
disappear in a fog of deceit, treachery, and bureaucratic incompetence.
In our case, when the words of law
enforcement as well as law school and elected officials took on a pejorative,
even a disparaging tone—our pain deepened. When we turned to these individuals
to find answers, to find “justice”—we found intellectual fraud and deceit. The
same will likely happen to the families who lost loved ones at Virginia Tech.
What could be done to prevent another
tragedy like the one at Virginia Tech? A great deal! First, the Virginia
legislature should adopt a law stating that if a faculty or staff member
identifies a student as mentally unbalanced and potentially violent, the student
must be referred to mental health authorities for evaluation. At the same time
an alert should be issued to all gun stores banning the sale of weapons and
ammunition to that individual. Any person selling a gun to someone for whom a
warning has been issued should serve a mandatory, long jail sentence.
Second—and by law—all educational
facilities in Virginia, both public and private, should have in place a
mandatory emergency plan. All students and faculty should be aware of the plan,
and that plan should be periodically rehearsed as are fire drills.
Third, in the event of any shooting on
school grounds, the school should immediately be closed. Police should be
called and posted around the facility until it is clear that the shooter has
been captured— not just a suspect as was the case at Virginia Tech.
At the time I wrote the
article, I did not realize how accurate my words were, nor did I realize how
they reflected the denials, deceptions, and lies that had taken place at
Columbine. I was writing based on my personal experieces with the Appalachian
School of Law and state officials. In fact, as I did research for this book,
the parallels between the shootings at Columbine, the Appalachian School of
Law, and Virginia Tech became glaringly apparent.
The first deceit that
all three school shootings share is the assertion that no one saw the threat or
had any hint that the killers were violent and possibly mentally unstable.
Let’s look at some of the facts:
Columbine—According to David
Cullen’s examination of that tragedy in his book Columbine, the police had very clear and specific evidence that
Eric Harris was a threat and was planning violence. In his chapter entitled,
“Telling Us Why,” he examines the repeated complaints made by Judy and Randy
Brown that Harris had threatened their children’s safety. “Thirteen months
before the massacre, Sheriff’s Investigators John Hicks and Mike Guerra had
investigated one of the Brown’s [sic] complaints. They’d discovered substantial
evidence that Eric was building pipe bombs. Guerra had considered it serious
enough to draft an affidavit for a search warrant against the Harris home. For
some reason the warrant was never taken before a judge. Guerra’s affidavit was
convincing. It spelled out all the key components: motive, means, and
opportunity.”
“A few days after the
massacre, about a dozen local officials slipped away from the Feds and gathered
clandestinely in an innocuous office in the county Open Space Department
building. The purpose was to discuss the affidavit for a search warrant. How
bad was it? What would they tell the public?”
“Guerra was driven to
the meeting, and told never to discuss it outside the group. He complied.”
“The meeting was kept
secret, too. That held for five years. March 22, 2004, Guerra would finally
confess it happened, to investigators from the Colorado attorney general. He
described it as ‘one of those cover-your-ass meetings.’”
“District Attorney Dave
Thomas attended the meeting. He told the group he found no probable cause for
the investigators to have executed the draft warrant—a finding ridiculed once
it was released. He was formally contradicted by the Colorado attorney general
in 2004.”
“At a notorious press
conference ten days after the murders, Jeffco [Jefferson County] officials
suppressed the affidavit and boldly lied about what they had known. They said
they could not find Eric’s Web pages, they found no evidence of pipe bombs
matching Eric’s descriptions, and had no record of the Browns meeting with
Hicks. Guerra’s affidavit plainly contradicted all three claims. Officials had
just spent days reviewing it. They would repeat the lies for years.”
“Several days after the
meeting, Investigator Guerra’s file on his investigation of Eric disappeared
for the first time.”
According to Cullen, a
grand jury report released on September 16, 2004, found that the Guerra file
should have been stored in three separate locations, both physical and
electronic. All three were destroyed, it concluded—apparently during the summer
of 1999. The Grand Jury described that destruction as “troubling.”
Appalachian School of Law—In the case of the law
school, there is ample evidence that the Appalachian School of Law knew that
the shooter, Peter Odighizuwa, was a threat. For example, his outbursts on
campus—including throwing chairs and cursing people—were so well known and
documented that he was barred from going into the Student Services office
unless he was escorted by the president of the Student Bar Association or the
dean, but he ignored those orders and went into the office, harassing its employees.
His outbursts were so frequent and so widely discussed that he was nicknamed
“the shooter,” a title that was sadly prophetic.
Odighizuwa’s penchant
for violence was known even in Richmond. The morning after the shooting,
Virginia Governor Mark Warner’s spokesperson admitted to news media that
Odighizuwa had a history of mental instability that school officials knew
about. The governor was a member of the Board of Trustees of the Law School at
the time of the shooting.
The most damning
evidence that officials of the law school had prior knowledge of the threat
Odighizuwa posed can be found in court documents filed in Wise County,
Virginia. According to those documents, which were filed as part of a lawsuit
against the school, three female staff members, just weeks before the killings,
complained to school officials about Odighizuwa, expressing fear for their
safety as well as the safety of others in the school. The complaint was made in
a school meeting. The school’s top three officials—President Lucius Ellsworth,
Dean L. Anthony Sutin and Associate Dean Paul Lund—were said to be in
attendance at the meeting. The documents assert that Ellsworth responded to the
complaint by saying, “You women and your hormones and your intuition … there is
nothing for you to be afraid of … it will be ok.” Within a month, Odighizuwa
gunned down Dean Anthony Sutin, Professor Blackwell, and student, Angela Dales.
He wounded three female students. Incredibly the school maintains that it had
no indication or warning that Odighizuwa was potentially violent.
Virginia Tech—At Blacksburg too, the warning signs were
readily apparent and ignored. Professor Lucinda Roy documents her as well as
others’ attempts and to get Cho psychological help. In Chapter Two of, “No Right to Remain Silent,” she writes
the following:
“… As soon as I read
the poem that Seung-Hui Cho had written earlier for Nikki Giovanni’s class, I
realized why she had asked me to look at it. The tone was angry and accusatory,
and it appeared to be directed at Nikki and her students.”
“I followed a series of
protocols I had developed during my time as chair. I consulted with trusted
colleagues in the department—in this case Professor Fred D’Aguiar, who was
serving with me as director of Creative Writing, and Cheryl Ruggiero, an
instructor who had served as assistant chair in the Department of English.
(Normally I would also have consulted Professor Nancy Metz, associate chair of
English, but she was on research leave in the fall of 2002.) Fred, Cheryl, and
I agreed that Nikki had been absolutely right to be concerned. Seung (the name
he wished to go by) had read the poem aloud in class, and although his piece
could perhaps be viewed as immature venting it could also be interpreted in a
more threatening way. …”
“On October 18, 2005, I
alerted units that dealt with troubled students at Virginia Tech that we had a
serious problem. It was the first in a series of e-mails I sent and phone calls
I made about Seung. In one of the e-mail notes I characterized what had occurred
in this way:
v
In the poem he castigates all of the class, accusing them
of genocide and cannibalism because they joked about eating snake and other
animals. He says he is disgusted with them, and tells them they will all ‘burn
in hell.’ He read the poem with dark glasses on … His name is Seung-Hui Cho and
I had him in my lecture class last year. The students in Nikki’s class have
asked for assistance because they are intimidated by him … Nikki no longer
feels comfortable teaching the student, and students have also requested
relief. As I understand it … I can remove Seung from Nikki’s class as long as I
offer him a viable alternative. I will be suggesting that he take an
Independent Study in lieu of the class, and that he work with either me or Fred
D’Aguiar. Nikki, who is never rattled by anything, is genuinely concerned about
this student’s behavior.”
Then on page 32 Roy
asserts, “I alerted several units (about Cho)
at once: the division of Student Affairs, the Cook Counseling Center
(CCC), the College of Liberal Arts and Human Services (CLAHS), and the Virginia
Tech Police Department (VTPD).” (To be
continued)
No comments:
Post a Comment