Victim Ryan 'Stack' Clark.
The family of the Virginia Tech massacre, Cho Seung-Hui, said they were 'hopeless, helpless and lost' today through a statement. The statement by Sun-Kyung Cho, sister of Seung-Hui Cho, on behalf of herself and her family:
'On behalf of our family, we are so deeply sorry for the devastation my brother has caused. No words can express our sadness that 32 innocent people lost their lives this week in such a terrible, senseless tragedy. We are heartbroken.
We grieve alongside the families, the Virginia Tech community, our State of Virginia, and the rest of the nation. And, the world.
Every day since April 16, my father, mother and I pray for students Ross Abdallah Alameddine, Brian Roy Bluhm, Ryan Christopher Clark, Austin Michelle Cloyd, Matthew Gregory Gwaltney, Caitlin Millar Hammaren, Jeremy Michael Herbstritt, Rachael Elizabeth Hill, Emily Jane Hilscher, Jarrett Lee Lane, Matthew Joseph La Porte, Henry J. Lee, Partahi Mamora Halomoan Lumbantoruan, Lauren Ashley McCain, Daniel Patrick O'Neil, J. Ortiz-Ortiz, Minal Hiralal Panchal, Daniel Alejandro Perez, Erin Nicole Peterson, Michael Steven Pohle, Jr., Julia Kathleen Pryde, Mary Karen Read, Reema Joseph Samaha, Waleed Mohamed Shaalan, Leslie Geraldine Sherman, Maxine Shelly Turner, Nicole White, Instructor Christopher James Bishop, and Professors Jocelyne Couture-Nowak, Kevin P. Granata, Liviu Librescu and G.V. Loganathan.
We pray for their families and loved ones who are experiencing so much excruciating grief. And we pray for those who were injured and for those whose lives are changed forever because of what they witnessed and experienced.
Each of these people had so much love, talent and gifts to offer, and their lives were cut short by a horrible and senseless act.
We are humbled by this darkness. We feel hopeless, helpless and lost. This is someone that I grew up with and loved. Now I feel like I didn't know this person.
We have always been a close, peaceful and loving family. My brother was quiet and reserved, yet struggled to fit in. We never could have envisioned that he was capable of so much violence.
He has made the world weep. We are living a nightmare.
There is much justified anger and disbelief at what my brother did, and a lot of questions are left unanswered. Our family will continue to cooperate fully and do whatever we can to help authorities understand why these senseless acts happened. We have many unanswered questions as well.
Our family is so very sorry for my brother's unspeakable actions. It is a terrible tragedy for all of us.'
How did Cho Seung-Hui pick out Emily Hilscher and Ryan Clark? Could they have exchanged glances on their way to or at breakfast? Had they met each other in the past? Was it planned? We may never know.
What sent Cho over the edge? In the past day or so, we've found out he was made fun of constantly in high school. His first time speaking in front of a class, students thought he had food in his mouth, couldn't understand what he was saying and everybody started laughing and said 'Go back to China!' Very nice. Could somebody have set him off? Highly doubtful. This was a long time in the making.
How did Cho select Norris Hall? Was it because it was one of the biggest buildings on campus and knew there would be many students in the hall at the time?
A couple things have upset me about all of this. One co-worker said 'this should be a learning experience.' No, that's wrong. The learning experience was Columbine. Or was supposed to be. Has America not learned anything? Watching 'Bowling for Columbine' last night, the obvious reason is guns. Guns need to be off the street. America has, by far, more guns than any other country in the world. As some Canadians say 'America has such a short fuse that whenever anything goes wrong, they shoot somebody instead trying to defuse the situation some other way.'
Somebody else told me that I should get rid of the links to the plays Cho wrote in English class because it 'glorified' what he had done. This is my response; e-mail CNN.com, MSNBC.com, FOXNEWS.com, AOLNEWS.com and ABCNEWS.com and tell them to get rid of the links. The thousand people that will read my journal doesn't quite compare to the one hundred million that will read the plays through their sites.
Talking with a high school senior here in Madison last night, I realize that kids are still the same. Kids are still mean. Kids still make fun of each other. It's very sad that, it seems, this played a part in a massacre that killed 32 people. This senior said 'I'll admit it, I do it. I've made fun of kids.' This is one of the good students, not one you would expect to participate in this kind of behavior.
After watching and reading a lot of the coverage this week, the one thing I will take away from this disaster is how many amazing students were taken off this earth far, far too early. Below is a list of the victims from CNN.com (not sure if I'm supposed to do this but I'm doing it anyways).
Jarrett Lane
No comments:
Post a Comment