Where were you on this day eleven years ago?

On this day eleven years ago - April 16, 2007 - a guy named Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people and wounded 17 others on the campus of Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg, Virginia. Then he took his own life.

(Coincidentally, 2018 is the first year since 2007 that April 16 falls on a Monday.)

It's safe to say that, after Columbine, Virginia Tech is the most famous school shooting in American history. Part of the reason for that is that we have a fairly extensive amount of documentation about Cho. For one thing, he mailed a bunch of videos of himself to NBC News.

(Most of the clips he sent to NBC have never been seen by the public. If he had put them on YouTube, which was still fairly new at the time, they likely would still be floating around.)

Also, he wrote a couple of really bad plays - Richard McBeef and Mr. Brownstone - that quickly achieved a kind of low-key Internet immortality:
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Like Columbine, Virginia Tech has a special meaning to me because it happened at a crucial moment of my life. In mid-April 2007, I was a college senior, looking warily at the prospect of an uncertain future.

I still remember walking into the student union and seeing a report of a shooting on TV. (This was before the full death toll was known.) Someone I knew was standing nearby. We exchanged a few comments about it. I said something like, "You never know what's going to happen anywhere, do you?" Then I went to class.

It wasn't until after class, when I was sitting in traffic, that I heard on the radio that the death toll was now in the dozens. Hearing the news gave me chills. By that time, Columbine had been off my radar screen for a while, but listening to the reports coming out of Virginia brought me right back to the days after NBK, when I was hungry for every scrap of information about Eric and Dylan that I could find.

I went to a restaurant to have lunch. My food got cold because I kept getting up from the table to look at the news coverage playing on the TV above the bar. Every minute, it seemed, the death toll kept going higher and higher.

At one point, I remember thinking, "Wow, this is a lot worse than 4/20. In the future, this is the shooting that will be remembered. Columbine will be mostly forgotten." Then I told myself, "Well, on 4/20, they said the death toll was 25, and then the next day they said it was 15. Maybe this one will go down, as well." But it never did go down.

Over the next few days, I spent every spare moment watching TV and looking up news reports on the Internet. I watched and read everything about Cho I could find. (The Virginia Tech students were pretty mellow. There were no David Hoggs popping out of the woodwork, trying to milk the tragedy for their own personal fame.)

It's hard to believe that all of this happened eleven years ago. It seems like yesterday. Then again, 4/20 seems like yesterday, too.

Does anyone else have any memories from that time?

How time flies, I believe I still have the paper from the following day somewhere, will try find, I remember the reports of a lot of people being killed and also speculation about a love triangle because of the first two murders which I still think are overlooked, don't visit this site as much as the events are too sad, good to see it still going strong

I remember being in class when I found out about it, the teacher said "did you hear about America class? A man walked into a college and killed his x-gf and her new boyfriend because he was jealous" and I lost interest after that. I think it was during the early reports that he was targeting an old girlfriend. I then came across videos of it online and one in particular they showed the CCTV of Columbine, I had no clue what it was and was wondering who the long haired guy is next to Seung.

LPorter101 wrote:

The Virginia Tech students were pretty mellow. There were no David Hoggs popping out of the woodwork, trying to milk the tragedy for their own personal fame.

Seems like it's only when high schools get shot up that the attention whores come out of the woodwork.

Frankly speaking I remember nothing particularly about that day. In that time I was a student and I was not interested in this type of crime. For me Cho isn't interesting as much as Columbine or Elliott Roger even though it was the most deadly school shooting. He was psychotic and very sick person but I'm particularly interested in shooter whom had psychopathic or/and narcissistic traits.

I was seven when it happened, the shooting was never mentioned on that day, I never saw any reports of it and I treated the day like usual.

I was 14 when it happened. I am not sure virginia tech always sticks out in my mind for some reason. I think its because Cho was this lonely,isolated guy, and he wrote all these crazy plays and stuff. I always found v-tech fascinating and Cho story really interesting. Just how this ticking time bomb was around and nobody noticed him. Well technically he was sent to mental ward.

I do not know its just crazy how someone can be completely crazy yet be in school writing reports, living on a campus with other people and one day go completely nuts. I dont know it just made a big impression on my young teenage mind, I think the only other shooting that comes close is isla vista.

Watching the news reports on live TV as a teenager.

I was 5 at the time and don't think it was on the news in the UK.

I was a teenager in england and it definitely was in the news i was into cho before i knew of columbine and was the first time i was fascinated by mass murder after i watched a really good bbc documentry on it that i cant find no more i used too like researching serial killers till that point

I don't really remember it even though i was 13 at the time, i remember Kauhajoki in 2008.

Can't remember.

i was 5 when it happened but i didnt ever watched news stations or anything so really i didnt know it even happened