Kaine defends report on Tech massacre

By DAVID RESS
Media General News Service

Published: November 7, 2008

Highlights:
- Governor says Virginia Tech report had inaccuracies, but he did not mislead victims and families by not disclosing them
- Victims & their families feel the report glossed over how Tech missed signals about the extent of shooter Seung-Hui Cho’s mental illness
- Kaine says he has not thought of asking for any corrections to the report

The governor’s panel report on the Virginia Tech massacre may have inaccuracies, but the group did its key task, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine says.

“If they had taken another two or three months, they would have had more information,“ Kaine said this week, acknowledging that recent disclosures contradict some of the report’s findings on the deaths of 32 students and professors on April 16, 2007.

“But it was a very strong report with good recommendations that we implemented and are implementing,“ Kaine said in an interview.

The victims’ families feel the panel relied on inaccurate information to find that the delay by Tech officials in warning the campus was understandable.

Tech officials did not disclose the first shootings until more than an hour after they learned a student had died. Their alert did not mention that the shooting was fatal or that the gunman had not been found.

Officials told the panel they believed the gunman was off campus, but new disclosures show they couldn’t have known that at the time the panel report said they did.

Kaine said he has not thought of asking that the panel report be corrected.

The governor also said he did not believe the state misled victims and families while negotiating a settlement this year by not disclosing inaccuracies in the report.

Kaine said an archive promised in the settlement would be the record for history, rather than the panel report.

In addition to the archive, the settlement provides for health insurance for a handful of the injured and promises that the state will reimburse medical and mental health-care expenses connected with the massacre.

The state fund designated to make those payments isn’t legally able to do so, but Kaine said he would ask the legislature to fix that when it convenes in January.

. . .

Asked about the Virginia State Police decision that it would not release its investigation records to the archive, Kaine said he didn’t want to give any special treatment to those records. The state police say they won’t release the records because that would be against their policy.

Suzanne Grimes, whose son, Kevin Sterne, was shot twice and was able to save his life that day by applying a tourniquet to his leg, said keeping the police records secret looks as if the state is trying to hide something.

Like many others, Grimes feels the panel report needs to be corrected and re-issued.

“If it is not corrected, then all of this doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter that 32 people died [and] that decisions were made and we don’t know why,“ she said.

Michael Pohle, whose 23-year old son, Mike, a graduate student, was killed in the massacre, said he believes the governor is “doing a dance now” over the records and panel report.

Families also feel the report glossed over how Tech missed signals about the extent of Seung-Hui Cho’s mental illness. The Richmond Times-Dispatch reported this month that even as Cho fell from the attention of administrators his final year, he was writing violent stories including one about shooting students in a classroom. His work drew a teacher’s comment about his interesting manner of writing about violence.

“From the very beginning, by virtue of the makeup of the panel, and by not allowing inclusion of the families or a representative of the families, the governor only wanted to identify the highly visible issues that were exposed from this tragedy, recommend highly visible legislation for political gain, and create a path to move on,“ said Joseph Samaha, whose 18-year-old daughter Reema died in the massacre.

“Not one person was to be held accountable, reprimanded or admonished,“ he said.

. . .

Last month, police and Tech officials disclosed to victims and families discrepancies between the panel report and the events of that day that included:

- The witness interview that led police and Tech officials to mistakenly conclude a gunman was off campus started 46 minutes later than the panel reported.

-Police never searched the rental van Cho drove for almost a month before the attack.

-Tech President Charles W. Steger now says the earliest he heard police had a “person of interest” in the first two shootings that day was at 8:40 a.m.—much later than the 8:10 a.m. time that a state investigation panel report suggested.

-Despite a detailed report by the panel of the actions of the Policy Group, a gathering of top Tech officials who managed the crisis that morning, those leaders now say they had no clear recollection of conversations. They cited the confusion as they were consulting separately with others on campus and trying to verify reports about the first two students who were shot fatally—accounts that came from the university police chief.

-Two Policy Group members advised family members of the shooting well before the group issued a general advisory to the campus.

-Policy Group members did not discuss closing the campus. That apparently contradicts what Tech officials told a state investigation panel when one member testified the group members questioned themselves about whether to close the campus.

“What happened on April 16th and leading up to that date, and in its aftermath stands alone in American history, if not world history,“ said Roger O’Dell, whose son, Derek, was shot by Cho but survived and joined other students to force their classroom door shut so the killer couldn’t return.

“Everyone needs to face it, rather than trying to brush it away, as though it never really happened, or happened within a cloud of mystery.“