The South Korean gunman who killed 32 people and himself at Virginia Tech university had lived legally in the United States with his parents for 14 years.
BLACKSBURG: He was a 23-year-old loner, with roots half a world away in South Korea, who hated "rich kids" and will now go down in US history as a notorious killer.
Cho Seung-Hui moved to the United States when he was just eight, but 15 years later his name is set to be permanently etched on the tragic roll call of US school and campus killings.
Nobody knows what inner turmoil led Cho Seung-Hui to go on a murderous rampage at one of the US's most venerable universities.
"You caused me to do this," he wrote in the several-page-long note that he left in his dorm room, ABC News reported, before going on a murderous rampage killing at least 30 people.
The note railed against "rich kids," "debauchery" and "deceitful charlatans" on campus, the Chicago Tribune reported.
But it shed little light on the motives behind his killing spree during which he stalked classrooms, firing on students and professors, before turning his gun on himself. By midday on Monday, 33 people lay dead on the campus.
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Cho also died with the words "Ismail Ax" in red ink on the inside of one of his arms, the Chicago Tribune reported, citing unidentified sources.
Police suspect Cho, who was studying English at Virginia Tech, first killed two people at a campus dormitory.
Then, according to media reports, he leisurely returned to his own dorm to write a rambling invective, re-arm and then storm the classroom building.
Cho was among the 2,000 foreigners from more than 110 countries attending the 26,000-student university in Blacksburg, Virginia.
Police said Cho was in his senior year and lived on campus at the Harper Hall dormitory, which houses 249 residents.
Cho had shown recent signs of violent, aberrant behaviour, including setting a fire in a dorm room and allegedly stalking some women, the Chicago Tribune said, citing an unnamed investigative source.
Investigators believe Cho at some point had been taking medication for depression, the daily said.
Cho Seung-Hui lived legally in the United States with his parents for 14 years. He moved to the United States in September 1992 and lived in Centreville, Virginia, said Chris Bentley, a spokesman with US Citizenship and Immigration Services. The Tribune said his family runs a dry cleaning business while his sister graduated from the elite Princeton University.
Cho "was very quiet, always by himself," neighbor Abdul Shash was quoted as saying in the Tribune. He spent a lot of his free time playing basketball, and would not respond if someone greeted him, Shash said.
Police released little more official information about Cho and university officials had trouble tracking down details about him.
"He was a loner," said Larry Hincker, associate vice president for university relations.
The lone gunman is the most common profile for a mass murderer, someone who is "isolated, reclusive and antisocial" said Alan Langlieb, director of workplace psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University.
"It's not exactly clear what snaps," he said. "Some of it is premeditated, but a person could wake up that day and decide I'm going to create social havoc."
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