New timeline for April 16 raises questions for Virginia Tech

‘To me that is the difference between life and death.‘—Virginia Tech parent

Virginia Tech officials couldn’t have confirmed that a suspected gunman had fled their campus as early on April 16, 2007, as they initially said they did, new information shows.

The mistaken belief that the shooter was off campus was a key factor delaying a warning to students and staff that day, when Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people in the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

The assumption about the man who proved to be the wrong person of interest in the shootings of Emily Hilscher and Ryan Clark early that morning came at least 46 minutes later than the official version of events reported by Tech to a state panel that investigated the response to the shootings.

The new time frame, disclosed to victims and their families in briefings earlier this month, means that for at least an hour after the first two shootings at the West Ambler Johnston Hall dormitory, all Tech officials knew was that a gunman was at large.

The university didn’t inform the campus that a gunman was loose until 10 minutes after Cho started shooting students and professors in Norris Hall, where 30 were killed.

“If they didn’t have a suspect or a person of interest for another 45 minutes or an hour, I think that would have put a different light on things,“ said W. Gerald Massengill, who led the Tech investigation panel appointed by Gov. Timothy M. Kaine.

“It would have made our conclusion even stronger, that they should have issued a warning sooner and more clearly,“ said Massengill, a retired Virginia State Police superintendent.

Michael Pohle, whose son Michael was killed that day, said the time difference was critical.

“That 46 minutes, to me that is the difference between life and death,“ he said.

“To know that this timeline has been so off for so long, we feel that we’ve been misled,“ Pohle said. “This just calls anything we have been told by them into question.“

Tech spokesman Larry Hincker said the timeline information Tech had provided to the Massengill panel was “generally accurate.“

But in response to detailed questions about the sequence of events, he said, “out of respect for these families, as well as for the integrity of the settlement, we are not in position at this time to publicly review what might have been said or not said” during the police briefings.

. . .

The new information, released in those briefings and through Freedom of Information Act requests by the Richmond Times-Dispatch, shows:

The half-hour-long interview with student Heather Haugh that led police to mistakenly pursue a “person of interest” off campus started 46 minutes later than officials told Massengill’s investigation.
Police were unable to find the person of interest, Karl Thornhill, until about a half-hour after Haugh contacted him to say Hilscher had been shot. Thornhill was Hilscher’s boyfriend, and he later was cleared of any suspicion in the shootings.
When Thornhill was stopped by police at 9:24 a.m. it was on Prices Fork Road, just off campus.
Tech’s Policy Group, made up of top officials responding to the crisis, may not have known police had a lead about a person of interest who was off campus until as late as 9:25 a.m. Cho began shooting in Norris Hall about 9:40 a.m.
Police never searched the rental van Cho drove for almost a month before the attack.
Families of the deceased meet today with Policy Group members, saying they need to know more about the decisions that group made in warning people that a gunman was loose and securing the campus. Yesterday, officials met with the families of the wounded.

Briefings by police to victims and families this month also revealed that a bomb-threat note, posted on a Norris Hall doorway before the massacre, was in Cho’s handwriting, family members said.

The families were additionally told that Cho had a class Tuesdays and Thursdays in Norris Hall. And while officials said they still don’t know Cho’s motive, police told families they believe he went to West Ambler Johnston intending to kill himself.

Virginia Tech Police Chief Wendell Flinchum told families that his first conversation about the West Ambler Johnston shootings with Tech President Charles W. Steger at 8:10 a.m. included only basic information that one student was dead and another was injured.

Flinchum told Steger there was no weapon at the scene and that bloody footprints led away from it, but he did not mention any leads, the chief told parents. That seems to contradict Massengill’s August 2007 state panel report, summarizing official findings on the massacre. That report said Flinchum began updating top Tech officials at 8:10, informing them of a probable suspect who was off campus.

In one critical contradiction of the official account, police told families that the interview that led them to a person of interest started at 8:16 a.m. The official account says the half-hour interview started at 7:30 a.m.

Tech issued its first notice that there had been a shooting on campus to students and staff at 9:26 a.m. That was at least 38 minutes after the university advised the governor’s office. The campus alert did not mention that a student had died or say anything about a gunman.

The first note by one of the crisis team members of the Policy Group stating that police had “a good lead” and recommending against a lockdown was from a briefing timed at 9:25 a.m., according to written notes obtained by The Times-Dispatch from a Freedom of Information Act request. None of the six people taking notes that day made any mention of a person of interest or any discussion about securing the campus before that briefing.

Earlier, at 8:45 a.m., the policy group decided against letting the media know of the shootings, the notes show.

“It almost seems that they were ready to proceed with business as usual without any regard to notify the campus population, much less the press,“ said Joseph Samaha, whose 18-year-old daughter, Reema, was killed.

“If they did they could have saved lives.“

. . .

The new timeline raises other questions about how police handled the initial investigation.

Police told families they checked for the person of interest at his home in Radford and at his 9 a.m. class at Radford University but missed him.

But the young woman whose 8:16 a.m. interview led police to him contacted him by text message. She also got in touch with her own boyfriend after her police interview, and he in turn contacted the person of interest by phone, telling him Hilscher had been shot but that he didn’t know her condition.

Police told family members they had secured West Ambler Johnston, but students were allowed to leave. Among them were Rachael Hill and Henry Lee, who went to Norris for 9 a.m. classes and were killed in the shootings.

A state police special agent who came to West Ambler Johnston to help police evaluate evidence arrived at 8:50 a.m. but quickly moved on to help question Hilscher’s boyfriend, after he was detained on Prices Fork Road. One family member said the state police agent described Thornhill as being quiet and withdrawn. A test at the site of his stop did not reveal any gunpowder residue on him.

Families are asking whether police searched the building and grounds carefully for the shooter or for any evidence before dorm residents started toward classes.

“The head investigator took that leap of faith,“ Samaha said of the assumption the shooter had left the scene. “One dead, one seriously injured, no gun at the scene, bloody footprints leading to a stairwell and ending there. The killer could have been anywhere. . . . Unfortunately, the killer was still in their midst.“

Massengill said the state panel’s conclusions were based on interviews of key officials soon after April 16. He said the panel did not see detectives’ notes from the day and that much of the research in documents involved the timing of when and how police and emergency crews responded, particularly to Norris Hall.

This weekend’s meetings and those held earlier came as a result of a settlement Tech reached this summer with families of the victims.

Kaine’s office has said it is waiting to see how the meetings go. Under the settlement, Tech will set up an archive about the massacre, provide lifetime health insurance for the injured, establish a trust to focus on campus safety and related issues, and pay victims and families of the deceased up to $100,000.
Contact David Ress at (804) 649-6051 or .