College Killers: School Shootings in North America and Europe - Columbine, Jonesboro, Bath, Thurston, Red Lake, Virginia, Pontiac’s Rebellion, Texas Tower, Beslan, Erfurt, Dunblane

by Gordon Kerr

  Psychiatric Care

  One classmate, Andy Koch, revealed even more worrying incidents. He began to receive phone calls from Cho in which he claimed to be Koch’s brother. He told him of a girlfriend he had whose name was ‘Jelly’ and who lived in outer space and called him ‘Spanky’. He insisted during one phone call to Koch that he was holidaying with Russian president Vladimir Putin.

  Koch finally alerted the college authorities when Cho, who had been accused of stalking female students, threatened to kill himself after being rejected by a girl he had been texting.

  Finally, it was decided that he needed treatment. In December 2005, he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital in Christiansburg, Virginia, with a view to committing him to the institution. It was decided, however, that he should merely undertake a course of outpatient treatment and he was released.

  He had not been involuntarily committed to a mental health facility which meant under Virginia law that he was still legally able to purchase firearms. Within a couple of months of his release, he had bought a 9 mm semi-automatic Glock 19 handgun. On the morning of 16 April, Cho woke up early and loaded his guns.

  Guns Loaded; Let the Rampage Begin

  The rampage began around 7 a.m. in West Ambler Johnson Hall. The 894 students who lodged there were just beginning to stir as Cho gained access. It has been suggested that an obsession with 18-year-old freshman, Emily Hilscher, led him there, but she did not know him and we will never know why he chose her as his first victim. He entered her room and fatally wounded her. Ryan Clark, a 22-year-old senior, was killed by a bullet in the neck as he rushed to help Emily.

  Cho fled West Ambler Hall and returned to his room where he changed out of his blood-soaked clothing, deleted his emails and removed the hard drive from his computer. No trace of the hard drive, or his mobile phone, has ever been found.

  Two hours later, Cho visited a nearby post office where he mailed a package of writings and videos to NBC News. Then, carrying a backpack in which were chains, locks, a hammer, a knife, his two guns and almost 400 rounds of ammunition, he set out for Norris Hall which housed the college’s Department of Engineering, Science and Mechanics.

  Arriving at the entrance, he chained shut the main doors, leaving a message taped across them warning that efforts to tamper with them would set off a bomb. He climbed the stairs to the second floor where there were a number of classrooms.

  In room 206, Indian-born Professor G.V. Loganathan was teaching an advanced hydrology engineering class when Cho walked in and opened fire, killing the professor and nine of his 13 students. Crossing the corridor to room 207, he shot dead Christopher Berman who was teaching German to ten students, four of whom Cho also killed.

  Hearing the gunshots from down the corridor, the students and lecturers in rooms 211 and 204 tried to barricade the doors. In 204, Professor Liviu Librescu was killed by multiple shots by Cho through the door. His bravery, however, allowed most of his students to escape through the window and only one was killed. In 211, attempts to prevent Cho entering failed and the teacher and 12 students died.

  Cho reloaded his weapons before returning to room 207 where survivors were tending to the wounded. Two of them were shot and wounded as they held the door, preventing Cho from entering. In room 206, he killed a further two students, one of whom, Partahi Mamora Halomoan Lumbantoruan, is thought to have tried to protect another student by lying on top of him. He died of multiple gunshot wounds, but the other student was unharmed.

  The Final Gunshot

  Meanwhile, Professor Kevin Granata, who had locked 20 students in an office on the third floor, went downstairs to find out what was going on. He encountered Cho who shot him dead.

  Down below, police officers, initially hampered by the chained doors and Cho’s message, got in through another entrance. As they made their way to the second floor, they heard a gunshot. It would be the last. In room 211 Cho had raised his gun to his temple and blown out his brains.

  This second attack had lasted around 12 minutes. Cho had fired 174 rounds, killing 30 people and wounding 17.

  The following day, the package he had posted arrived at NBC’s offices. In one of the videos, Cho angrily ranted, ‘I didn’t have to do this. I could have left. I could have fled. But no, I will no longer run…You had a hundred billion chances and ways to have avoided today, but you decided to spill my blood. You forced me into a corner and gave me only one option. The decision was yours. Now you have blood on your hands that will never wash off. You had everything you wanted. Your Mercedes wasn’t enough, you brats. Your golden necklaces weren’t enough, you snobs. Your trust fund wasn’t enough. Your Vodka and Cognac weren’t enough. All your debaucheries weren’t enough. Those weren’t enough to fulfil your hedonistic needs. You had everything.’

  EUROPE

  Cologne School Massacre

  Year: 1964

  Perpetrator: Walter Seifert

  Murdered: 10

  ‘I am Adolf Hitler the Second!’ he screamed as he created mayhem on 11 June, 1964 at the Catholic elementary school in Köln-Volkhoven in the north-west of the city of Cologne, in Germany.

  Walter Seifert’s life had fallen apart. Three years previously, his wife had died in childbirth and he had suffered from tuberculosis for some time, the illness preventing him from working. To make matters worse, he had been diagnosed as schizophrenic. He also harboured a deep-seated grudge against the German government which he believed was treating him unfairly by denying him a war pension for his service in the Wehrmacht during World War II. He had written several muddled letters to the head of the health department, the town clerk and the head of the provincial government in which he complained that he had been treated unfairly by public health officers.

  The Playground Becomes the Killing Ground

  On that June day, Seifert’s simmering resentment and sense of injustice erupted in a volcano of hate directed at the children and teachers of the Catholic elementary school.

  It began shortly after 9 a.m. when Seifert walked into the school playground. He barricaded the school gate with a piece of wood and made his way towards some temporary wooden pavilions containing six classrooms that had been built in the playground beside the main building. He was carrying a weed spray that he had converted into a flame-thrower. It was filled with a highly flammable mixture and could deliver a flame up to 19ft (6m) long. He also carried a 5ft (1.5m) long lance and a home-made iron catapult.

  Ignoring 67-year-old teacher, Anna Langohr, who was giving a sports lesson in a corner of the yard to a group of girls, Seifert approached one of the pavilions. Using his catapult, he smashed the windows and then directed his flame-thrower in through the window at the class inside. The children’s clothing immediately caught fire as did the walls and floor of the wooden construction. Sixty-two-year-old teacher, Gertrud Bollenrath, helped by some of the children, frantically tried to extinguish the flames that had engulfed many of the pupils. She then ran out into the playground and confronted Seifert, trying to stop him repeating his action at another classroom. He lunged at her with his lance, stabbing her. Meanwhile, children, their clothes ablaze, came screaming out into the schoolyard. Seifert once again directed his flame-thrower at them.

  He moved towards the group being taught in the playground and Anna Langohr positioned herself in front of the children, barring his way. He switched on his flame-thrower and aimed it at her, seriously burning her.

  He turned and approached the other pavilion where two teachers, Ursula Kuhr and Ursula Kunz, tried to barricade the doors with their bodies. Seifert was too strong for them, however, forcing one of the doors off its frame. One of the teachers, 24-year-old Ursula Kuhr, tripped and fell to the ground and as she lay there, Seifert stabbed her several times with the lance. She would die shortly afterwards. Kunz, meanwhile, managed to escape.

  A Lifetime of Scars

  By this time, people were responding to the commotion at the school and they began to come out of the nearby houses to
ascertain what was going on. Seifert panicked and ran into a nearby field and a short while later, was apprehended by the police officers who had converged on the scene.

  Meanwhile, back at the school, men from a passing dustbin lorry had begun to extinguish the children and stopped passing cars to transport them to the nearest hospital as quickly as possible. Doctors and specialists fought for weeks to save the lives of the badly burned children, many of whose bodies were covered with 90 per cent burns. Survivors underwent many months of treatment for their physical injuries and even longer for their overwhelming psychological scars.

  Both Ursula Kuhr and Gertrud Bollenrath died that day, as well as eight pupils. Anna Langohr hovered between life and death for a week, but survived her injuries, eventually being discharged from hospital after four months. The school was pulled down in an attempt to wipe out the memory of what had occurred there.

  Walter Seifert, meanwhile, had no intention of being prosecuted for his crime. As he was being arrested, he bit on a cap in his mouth containing the plant poison parathion. He failed to die immediately as he had hoped, but lingered until that evening when his miserable life finally ended. His last words were, ‘The senior medical officer…wanted to kill me. This is the revenge for it.’

  Dunblane School Shootings

  Year: 1996

  Perpetrator: Thomas Hamilton

  Murdered: 17

  Thomas Hamilton was born in 1952 in Glasgow, Scotland, to divorced parents, Thomas and Agnes Hamilton. Married for just 18 months, Thomas had left his pregnant wife for another woman and the new baby would never know his father.

  When Hamilton was two, his grandparents adopted him and he was led to believe that they were his real parents and that his mother was his sister. He would not know the truth until 1974, when he was 22.

  A Firearm Obsession

  While still a teenager, Hamilton became fascinated by guns, joining a rifle club and collecting firearms. He also became involved with the Boy Scouts, in 1973, being appointed assistant Scout leader of a Scout group in Stirling where he was living. His leadership skills came into question, however, when he led a group of boys on a winter expedition. A number of them returned home wet and suffering from mild hypothermia. He was accused by parents of having been reckless with his charges and was forced to resign.

  Following the failure of a do-it-yourself retail business he had started, he launched a new venture, setting up a number of boys’ clubs in and around Stirling and the neighbouring town of Dunblane. Renting out space at local gyms and schools, he organized activities for boys aged between seven and 11. The clubs were popular at first and membership increased rapidly. Soon, however, boys started staying away, complaining that Hamilton was too strict while others described how he would make them do things which they were not comfortable with and then pay them to remain silent about them. Eventually, the police began to take an interest in Thomas Hamilton.

  Although there were stories of him getting boys to change into their swimming trunks to rub suntan lotion over his body while he groaned in ecstasy, police were unable to find anything at his house that implicated him. Nonetheless, a report was written recommending that his firearms permit be revoked because of the complaints against him and because he seemed to be an unstable character. However, nothing was done about it and he continued to run his clubs.

  It didn’t stop the rumours spreading around the town though, and it made Hamilton increasingly paranoid. He began writing letters to important people within the community, claiming that he was being victimized. He also wrote threatening letters to teachers who had been telling parents not to send their children to Hamilton’s clubs. He even wrote to the Queen.

  Murder on his Mind

  On the morning of 13 March 1996, Hamilton, now 43, drove his white van away from his home in Kent Road, Dunblane. It was a frosty morning and before he drove off he had been forced to scrape the ice off his windscreen. A passing neighbour, who had a brief conversation with him, later reported nothing untoward in his behaviour and, indeed, in the days prior to the shootings, there was nothing to suggest the horror that he was about to perpetrate.

  Pulling up in a car park at Dunblane Primary School at around 9:30 a.m., he got out and, using pliers, cut telephone wires at the foot of a nearby telegraph pole. He set off across the car park to the school building, armed with two 9 mm Browning HP pistols and two Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum revolvers. He had 743 cartridges, 109 of which he would fire that morning. He entered the school through a door on the west side of the building.

  A class of 28 children – 25 aged five and the other three aged six – led by their 47- year-old teacher, Gwen Mayor, were in the school gymnasium, ready for a PE lesson. Sports teacher, Eileen Harrild, supervisory assistant, Mary Blake, and Gwen Mayor were discussing the lesson when they heard noises. Hamilton, it seems, was firing random shots outside the hall. The women turned towards the doors through which burst Thomas Hamilton wearing a dark jacket, black corduroy trousers, a woollen hat and ear protectors. In his hand was a gun.

  Hamilton walked into the gym firing indiscriminately. Eileen Harrild was hit, blood seeping from wounds to her arms, her right hand and left breast. She staggered into a storage area in the gym, and a number of children scrambled in after her. Gwen Mayor, meanwhile, fell to the floor, killed instantly and Mary Blake, also shot, also made it to the storage area, taking a number of children with her. Screams rang out from the shocked and terrified children in the store and those who remained outside in the gym. Hamilton continued to fire into the terrified children, walking up one side of the gym. Moving to the centre of the hall, he walked in a semi-circle, firing 16 times into a group of them as they lay cowering on the floor. He then walked up to them and fired a barrage of bullets at point-blank range.

  At the southern end of the gym, he fired a further 24 bullets, also shooting through a window at an adult that he spotted walking past outside. Opening the fire escape door, he let loose another four shots.

  He stepped out and shot at the library cloakroom where teacher Grace Tweddle was wounded in the head. He fired another nine shots into a nearby classroom. Fortunately, however, the quick-thinking teacher had already ordered her pupils to lie on the floor and as a result no one was hit.

  He returned to the gym and resumed firing. Suddenly he stopped. Pulled a revolver from his pocket, stuck the barrel in his mouth and pulled the trigger. Just four minutes had passed since Thomas Hamilton had arrived at the school. Fifteen pupils and their teacher Gwen Mayor lay dead and one more pupil would die later in hospital. As a result of the atrocity perpetrated by Hamilton, all .22 calibre handguns were banned in Britain.

  Erfurt Massacre

  Year: 2002

  Perpetrator: Robert Steinhäuser

  Murdered: 16

  The Steinhäusers lived on Ottostrasse, on the outskirts of the picturesque old town area in Erfurt, capital of the region of Thuringia in Germany. Frau Steinhäuser, who worked for a local skin clinic, was estranged from her husband, a department head of the German multinational, Siemens, and shared her comfortable house with the couple’s 19-year-old son, Robert.

  Background of a Spree Killer

  Until October 2001, Robert Steinhäuser had been a student at the Gutenberg-Gymnasium school in Erfurt but he had been expelled after forging a medical certificate to explain an absence from school and he had also threatened a teacher. He was afraid to inform his parents about his expulsion, instead leaving the house every day, pretending that he was going to school.

  His expulsion left him with no qualifications and a sense of victimhood and despondency about his future. This hopelessness, he felt, led him to commit the largest mass killing in Germany since the massacre of 17 Israeli athletes by the Black September terrorist group at the 1974 Munich Olympics.

  Steinhäuser had always been interested in firearms and kept four guns at home, the two short- and two long-barrelled guns that he was permitted to own by law. He would use a couple of th
ose guns during the outrage he was about to perpetrate. He also amassed a large quantity of ammunition and after the shootings, police reported finding a quantity at home as well as 500 rounds in a bag secreted in a lavatory at the school.

  He was an inconspicuous and quiet boy, described by a friend as ‘not stupid, but bloody lazy’. Indeed, while he was at school, he frequently played truant and explained his absences with forged sick notes of the type that led to his expulsion. He had already been held back for a year, preventing him from sitting the ‘Arbiter’ – the final exam that he was required to pass if he was to gain entrance to university.

  A Schoolbag Full of Murder Weapons

  Steinhäuser’s murderous rampage began on the opening day of the Arbiter exams from which he had been excluded. He knew that his expulsion would come to light as soon as the exam results were published and was almost certainly becoming desperate.

  That day, 26 April 2002, he left home for the Gutenberg-Gymnasium, his mother wishing him luck for the exam. What she was unaware of, however, was that his schoolbag didn’t contain books but a Glock 17 which took 17-round magazines and a Mossberg 590 Mariner 12-gauge pump-action shotgun with a Pachmayr pistol grip, 500 rounds of ammunition and a black outfit with a Ninja-style face mask. Arriving at school, he sneaked into the toilet where he changed into his outfit.

  The shooting began shortly before 11 a.m. and his target was the teaching staff at the school. He moved from classroom to classroom, stopping briefly in the doorway of each to shoot the teacher. He paid no attention to the terrified pupils, although two were killed by gunshots fired randomly through a locked classroom door. He would, in most cases, wound the teacher from a distance before standing over the prostrate body to deliver the coup de grâce.