Cho Seung Hui had biological psychiatric disorder, say experts
As experts analysed the disturbing materials left behind by the Virginia Tech killer Cho Seung Hui today, it became increasingly clear that Cho was almost a classic case of a school shooter.
He was, they have said, a painfully awkward, picked-on young man who lashed out with methodical fury at a world he believed was out to get him.
"In virtually every regard, Cho is prototypical of mass killers that I've studied in the past 25 years," said North-eastern University criminal justice professor James Alan Fox, co-author of 16 books on crime.
"That doesn't mean, however, that one could have predicted his rampage."
Cho's great-aunt, who lives in South Korea, said yesterday that because he did not speak much as a child and after the family emigrated to the United States, doctors thought he may be autistic.
Another expert who has worked with mentally disturbed young criminals suggested that Cho's actions probably had genetic causes.
"This is very different" from someone who was bullied to the breaking point - Cho was clearly psychotic and delusional, said Dr Louis Kraus, chief of child and adolescent psychiatry at Chicago's Rush University Medical Centre.
More likely, he said, is that Cho had a biological psychiatric disorder.
