Tragedy at Virginia Tech* [8 UPDATES]

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In Memory Of Unfortunately, the horrific shooting rampage at Virginia Tech (240 miles from D.C.), which is now being described as the deadliest in U.S. history may does have a brown angle, if only to further a reckless agenda. The death toll is up to 32 33; at least 22 28 people are injured. Tipster Hema emailed us about Debbie Schlussel, a blogger who didn’t waste any time before irresponsibly blaming “Pakis” for the tragedy (I have quoted most of it so you don’t have to go to the site– it doesn’t deserve the traffic):

Who is the “Asian” Mass Murderer at Virginia Tech?
Here’s what we know about the murderer of at least 32 students and maimer of at least 28 more at Virginia Tech, today:
* The murderer has been identified by law enforcement and media reports as “a young Asian male.”
* The Virginia Tech campus has a very large Muslim community, many of which are from Pakistan (per terrorism investigator Bill Warner).
* Pakis are considered “Asian.”

snip

If I were Asian, I’d be legitimately upset with this broad generalization of the mass murderer’s identity.
Why am I speculating that the “Asian” gunman is a Pakistani Muslim? Because law enforcement and the media strangely won’t tell us more specifically who the gunman is. Why?

And the ass-covering finale:

Even if it does not turn out that the shooter is Muslim, this is a demonstration to Muslim jihadists all over that it is extremely easy to shoot and kill multiple American college students.

So far, there is no indication that she might be right. I pray no one decides to indulge their inner-vigilante after reading her hate-spew. Enough people have been hurt by this nightmare.

May the memory of those students whose lives were stolen be eternal. This is just heart-breaking. I’ll update this story as it develops…

::


UPDATE 8: Minal Panchal is confirmed among the lost (Thanks, brown_fob).

Information about Minal’s death came in late because no immediate family member was present on campus.
I remember her life here.


UPDATE 7: Information about the gunman (Thanks, Desishiksa):

Cho Seung Hui was a South Korean native who immigrated to this country as a child, officials said. His lifeless body was found in Norris Hall, a classroom building, among those of several other slain students, Virginia state police superintendent Col. Steve Flaherty said. Cho, a senior, had apparently taken his own life. Cho graduated in 2003 from Westfield High School in Fairfax…
Cho, described by fellow students a loner, cleared a federal criminal background check at the time his green card was renewed in 2003, as did his family, a U.S. immigration official said. [WaPo]


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p>UPDATE 6: Regarding VoiceInTheHead’s comment:

It has also been reported that an Indian student, Minal Panchal, is missing after the shootout. [DNA]


UPDATE 5: A desi Professor is among the lost (Thanks, Murugan):

Reports have it that an Indian-origin professor is among those killed in the campus massacre.
Professor G V Loganathan of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering was teaching in a class in the Norris Hall – one of the crime scenes – when the gunman went on rampage. [IBN]
Abhi remembers him here.


UPDATE 4: In a move which shocks absolutely no one, the blogger who inspired our post uses the latest information in this case (Chinese, not “Paki”) to rail against furriners coming to America for college (Thanks again, Hema):

So, the perpetrator of the Virginia Tech massacre is a Chinese national here on a student visa. And today, this alien did “the job that Americans just won’t do.”
Remember that the next time you hear President Bush and Condi Clueless waxing lyrical about how we need more foreign students in America. We do not. Remember the Mana Saleh Almanajam and Shaker Mohsen Alsidran, two Saudi students in Tampa, last year, who hijacked a school bus full of kids while wearing trench coats in 90-plus degree weather?
…And remember: Just because this attacker was not Muslim, doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of potential and hopeful ones among the thousands Muslim nations are sending here to “study” under Saudi King Abdullah’s scholarships.[pure crap]
See? This is a teaching opportunity, to remind us of how evil Muslims are.


UPDATE 3: Campus police thought it was an “isolated incident”; the email warning they sent was probably too little, too late.

“You can second guess all day. We acted on the best information we had.”
At 9:29 a.m., the university sent an e-mail warning students that a gunman was on the loose and to stay indoors. At about that time, a shooter opened fire at the engineering school’s Norris Hall, killing 30 people. Several students leapt to safety from upper stories, and the gunman’s body was later found at the building, Flinchum said. [Bloomberg]


UPDATE 2: CircusInJungle points us to Wiki, which first said the shooter was “James Jay Kim”. The article has been updated, no longer reflects that.


UPDATE 1: Amardeep provides a link where an eye-witness IDs the suspect as “Asian”; the shooter may have been looking for his girlfriend.

*I have amended the title (was Tragedy at Virginia Tech; Quick, Blame Pakis) and original content of this post because it seemed like the appropriate thing to do; several of Schlussel’s quotes have been removed because they serve no further purpose here. Additionally, updates are now in reverse-chronological order, to facilitate information dissemination.

287 thoughts on “Tragedy at Virginia Tech* [8 UPDATES]”

  1. I know its not your intention, but its not wise to post rumors and opinions at this stage….

  2. I respectfully disagree. Schlussel has an agenda (“Pakis”?), until people can tell all us furriners apart, it directly impacts us. We have a right to know. I think your comment belongs more on her blog, but I wouldn’t recommend wasting your time… 🙁

  3. very tragic. if we can all take a moment of silence.

    Even if it does not turn out that the shooter is Muslim, this is a demonstration to Muslim jihadists all over that it is extremely easy to shoot and kill multiple American college students.

    what kind of fucked up shit is that? what is this comment based on? stereotypes? bombings and school shootings are in the same category now? was the last school shootings done by brown kids? also was mr. tim mcveigh muslim? what is the muslim civilian casualty up to now in the middle east?

  4. My thoughts and prayers go out to VT. How horrific.

    I’m sorry ANNA, but you can go onto DU-type blogs and find people blaming Bush and the Iraq war for this: I know, because some of the right wing blogs are linking to them, saying: look, look what this says about the left. The better ones offer their thoughts and prayers, and caution patience, and not to jump to any conclusions.

  5. Debbie Schlussel is a wannabe media whore ala Ann Coulter. She will use ANY incident to claim muslim/arabs are behind it; Anything she’s says or writes is suspect.

  6. I’ve been trying to catch the updates all day. It’s very disturbing and I really can’t see myself getting involved in a speculative dialog so early on. I’ll get my guns out for when the identity of the shooter is known.

  8. Not to mention that “Paki” is a racial slur equivalent to “ch*nk.” She needs to be held accountable for saying this shit. I’m contacting mediamatters.org right now.

  9. I left a comment on Shlussel’s page regarding “Pakis”…how ignorant is she…

  11. The right wing is on their knees now praying to God that the killer is a Muslim! Ohhh…I can just sense their collective angst as the authorities have not yet disclosed the identity of the killa’

  12. This is a sad sad event. I am still sitting here in shock.

    I wonder what Schlussel will have to say if I proposed a theory that some one was trying to take out the brown people on campus, given the high percentage of “homegrown terrorists” there.

  14. I went to VT 1993-1997 and it is just tragic to read about what happened at my school.

  15. MD is talking about this site:

    http://www.democraticunderground.com/

    And she is partially correct. There is always people on both sides that bring out the worst.

    PS: Could you link those websites MD? Be curious to see what threads are being as being representative.

  16. I don’t understand why people feel the need to attack the media, government, etc. at a time like this. The shooter is dead. Possibly his identity is not being released so that a)the shooters family can be contacted b)the shooter’s identity and, therefore, his nationality is still unknown or c)that information will not bring back the students who died today.

    I read Miss Schlussel’s blog. Its so hurtful to lash out at the messengers instead of mourning and sending prayers to the family’s of those lost. Also, no one has confirmed that the shooter is even a student, so the make-up of the student body is fairly irrelevant. I found it interesting that she felt this tragedy showed how easy it is to gun down American students. As though the shooter is acting as a terrorist by encouraging terrorists–even if the attack was not motivated by terror.

    That’s a stretch. She’s spreading hate. It is unfortunate.

    My thoughts and prayers are with the families of the victims, those injured and the Va Tech community.

  17. Even if it does not turn out that the shooter is Muslim, this is a demonstration to Muslim jihadists all over that it is extremely easy to shoot and kill multiple American college students.

    I never understood this logic, like Muslim jihadists can’t figure out by themselves to run into a public area and shoot people?? These f’ing people spend every waking moment of their lives figuring out how to end other life. Don’t you think “run into an area and just shoot” would’ve crossed their mind already?

    To be honest, this sort of event does have crazy white cracker written all over it, but so did the beltway sniper thing. So I’ve stopped trying to guess nationality. But it seems somewhat outside the jihadi M.O.

  18. I’m sorry ANNA, but you can go onto DU-type blogs and find people blaming Bush and the Iraq war for this

    Blaming the policies of an administration is in no way analogous to incriminating an entire ethnic group and evoking racial slurs. Not the same thing.

  19. The right wing is on their knees now praying to God that the killer is a Muslim! Ohhh…I can just sense their collective angst as the authorities have not yet disclosed the identity of the killa

    yeah, its completely disgusting; don’t worry, even if its not a muslim/brown person, they will use their highly developed logical faculties to draw rarefied and exceedingly subtle (as a sledgehammer, that is) implications

  20. At least one first-hand witness — who was himself shot in the arm — has described the shooter as “Asian,” which in the U.S. usually means East Asian: link

    Several sites have indicated a girlfriend connection.

  21. At the end of the day, if the right-wing gun lobbyists of America weren’t so powerful, shit like this wouldn’t happen in the first place. I hope you desi yanks put that bitch Shlussel in her place. I live in London and the anti-Islam here is pretty horrendous, but if I were in the US, I’d be a very angry young woman. I remember working with the most right-wing self-righteous redneck from Illinois who used http://www.jihadwatch.com as his main source of news. I’d be flipping out like ANNA too!

  22. The identity of the perpetrator is now supposed to be James Jay Kim. He committed suicide inside Norris Hall by a self-inflicted shot to the head.[5] He was believed to have used either two 9 mm. caliber handguns or a 9 mm. caliber handgun and a .22 caliber handgun.[11] Authorities said that the gunman carried no identification,[13] but that investigators were trying to trace purchase records for the guns found near the body.[5] A student speaking to TIMES NOW said that the first gunshots were heard when classes were in progress. “We heard about 30 gunshots in the morning. The gunman appeared to be Asian and was looking for his girlfriend,” the student said.[14] The FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives believe the gunman, described as a young Asian male, used two handguns in the shootings before taking his own life. One official added that the gunman was “heavily armed and wearing a vest.”

    From wikipedia

  23. Btw, Norris Hall is the Engineering bldg. Given the higher percentages of desis and Asians in general in fields like Engineering, one would wonder this shooter was out to get Asians/brown folks.

  24. What galls me (aside from the ridiculous logical leap required to go from “shooter” to “Muslim jihadist”) is that Schlussel is either so ignorant or so disingenuous that she actually responded to someone’s comment referencing her use of “Pakis” with “YOUR BELIEF SYSTEM IS FLAWED. EITHER TERM IS CORRECT. WHAT IS THIS–THE IMUS THOUGHT POLICE?”.

  25. and there is one commenter on Schlussel’s blog who finds it ‘shocking’ that a large number of students at VT are from China and India. I am waiting for some hater to pick up on that comment and run with it.

    Is the only way some people know to mourn is to hate?

  26. Very sad. Doesn’t look like terrorism and I don’t think Bush has a girlfriend.

  27. It’s pointless to write on Schlussel’s blog or email. She loves the attention. I’ve read tons on her and nothing in her history shows that she cares about a different view point, or even, to care when she’s wrong to actually say that. For example, she went after a junior republican senator from California – Darrell Issa because he went on a trip to the mid-east and his ethnic background is Lebanese. She claimed without any proof that he met with Arafat – even though there were other senior senator’s there and there was nothing else anywhere to corroborate this — she went on a tirade about how he was working with terrorists. The result of this was that an extremist Jewish group tried to blow up his offices, but were caught before they could. Schlussel claimed that her article never said anything about committing violence but didn’t exactly show her proof that he did anything either.

  28. I suppose people in the USA media don’t realise that ‘Paki’ is like using the N word?

    Really sad and horrifying news. And this e-mail ANNA quotes actually makes my spine chill.

    Commiserations Americans, really sad and almost unthinkable occurence.

  29. Yeah, the ignorance of it all sends chills down my spine. It’s a deranged Star Wars mentality when it comes to the likes of her. She should be sued for her comment.

  31. To be honest, this sort of event does have crazy white cracker written all over it, but so did the beltway sniper thing. So I’ve stopped trying to guess nationality. But it seems somewhat outside the jihadi M.O.

    You don’t need “white” when you write “cracker”.

  32. I really do wish people would wait until all the facts were in before jumping to conclusions. This applies more to Debbie Shlutskie’s blog than SM.

    And you know? I’m really starting to loathe certain parts of America with a deepseated vehemence, because this kind of thing is popping up ALL THE TIME these days. Her comment about the “Imus Thought Police” is especially ironic, since that would be just another example of the kind of intolerance that’s made it uncomfortable for me to go to movies, ride a plane, or make eye-contact with a random stranger because they might THINK I WAS A TERRORIST.

    When oh when will the country swing left again? Please, when?

  33. Shouldn’t the anger of the readers here be at the shooter who took over 30 young lives, more then Schlussel personal blog.

  35. If you listen to the eyewitness account on washingtonpost.com, you’ll hear a student, who was in the room at the time of the shooting, describe the shooting. When the reporter asks the student to describe how the shooter looked, he simply says “serious.” My guess is that if the shooter looked like he might possibly be Arab or Muslim, eyewitness accounts would most definitely note that right away.

  36. more rumors from angryasianman:

    According to unconfirmed rumors available to The Reference Frame, the killer was a 6-foot tall male Asian student between 20 and 25 years from Radford University whose girlfriend from Virginia Tech left him. He had two guns and wore a vest with too much ammunition. In the morning, he went to her dormitory. She was not there so he shot her roommate and some staff of the dormitory. They didn’t shut down the university, so he continued and tried to find the girlfriend in the classroom. He didn’t know the exact location, so he has shot a couple of classes and then himself.

  37. @34 – Brownfob

    If your a police officer and you just got the word that a the suspect is Asian, specifically Chinese, etc. What would you do? They are probably doing the safe thing both for themselves and the rest of the campus. At least they are not shooting first and asking questions later.

  38. I am a student at William and Mary in Virginia and we consider V. Tech to be a sister college. I nor any of my classmates can describe the shock and the heartache we have for what happened in Virgina Tech. Many of our friends from Northern Virginia attended V. Tech. Right now, we are frantically contacting our friends in facebook. Fortunetely, my friends are safe. But this is a opportunity for mourning, not for pointing blame. The shooter might be Indian/ Pakistani. He might be Asian. But now is not the time for pointing fingers.

    I am disappointed at what Schlussel is saying. Most of us don’t even know the identities of the people who are shot. Now is not the time to push an agenda.

    I hope everyone has the virtue of mourning the victims of this unfortunate tragedy.

  39. Shouldn’t the anger of the readers here be at the shooter who took over 30 young lives, more then Schlussel personal blog.

    Analyzing Schlusser’s writing to point out the kind of hate it is attempting to fan against an entire community (with the hundreds of potential deaths that might result from such hate-politics in the US/world arena) is just as important as sadness and anger at the shooter.

    Thanks, Anna for that sadly illuminating post. It is important for us to be alert to how language gets used to make veiled (or come to think of it not so veiled) insinuations and planting seeds of hate and suspicion.

  40. brownout:

    If your a police officer and you just got the word that a the suspect is Asian, specifically Chinese, etc. What would you do? They are probably doing the safe thing both for themselves and the rest of the campus. At least they are not shooting first and asking questions later.

    I’m not pointing fingers here. Officers did the right thing. My post was to provide some ‘facts’ (slim) in the wake of the rumors that have been floating around.

  41. Also, I don’t think any of the students care about what rightwingers or leftwingers blog. Most of us are just horrified that this would happen at a university like V. Tech. We are just facebooking each other to ensure we are safe.

  42. AVi,

    I am sorry for what you and your friends are going through – I pray for the best for you all.

    AVi is right, and we shouldn’t allow people like Schlussel to get to us like this. That way they win.

  43. …listening to the stream right now– they’re interviewing a sophomore who was saying that it was so windy, helicopters couldn’t medevac victims. 🙁 It was unbelievably windy in DC; mailboxes blowing over, etc. Didn’t even occur to me to connect the two.

  45. that blog was sickening.

    regardless of the ethnicity of the shooter– he was clearly extremely disturbed to resort to such inhumane violence. i seriously believe we need to put an emphasis on mental health and well-being in the US. perhaps some tragedies like this could be prevented if screenings were more routine and mandatory.

    also, the systems in place to purchase firearms both legally and illegally in the US are far too simple. gun violence plagues our nation in many ways. i really wonder how many tragedies in every type of community need to take place before our nation stops cowering behind the NRA and an outdated constitutional right.

  46. According to unconfirmed rumors available to The Reference Frame, the killer was a 6-foot tall male Asian student between 20 and 25 years from Radford University whose girlfriend from Virginia Tech left him. He had two guns and wore a vest with too much ammunition.

    Um…what?

  47. The shooter might be Indian/ Pakistani. He might be Asian.

    In America, unlike the UK, the word “asian” applies to east asians not south asians. The shooter has been described as asian by a number of sources. You can therefore rest assured he is east asian. The Korean guy named is the most likely perpetrator at this point. Koreans are the most hot-headed and macho of east asians. They are also sick and tired of losing their korean girlfriends to white men with an asian fetish.

  48. Clueless (#33):

    Shouldn’t the anger of the readers here be at the shooter who took over 30 young lives, more then Schlussel personal blog.

    No.

    That guy was messed up, sure. But I don’t really see what being angry at him would accomplish. I’m fairly certain he was unhappy and probably mentally ill, since he allegedly took his own life.

    On the other hand, I think it’s very appropriate and useful to be angry at someone who uses a tragic incident like this to fan the flames of racial hatred purely so she can get an extra 5 minutes of fame in her otherwise stupid and meaningless life.

  49. The Korean guy named is the most likely perpetrator at this point. Koreans are the most hot-headed and macho of east asians. They are also sick and tired of losing their korean girlfriends to white men with an asian fetish.

    Way to lower the level. Dumb generalizations about ethnic groups are NOT welcome here. Desist or be gone. Thank you.

  50. Koreans are the most hot-headed and macho of east asians.

    Ummm, let us be careful of not committing Schlusserisms here…