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Virginia Tech Massacre 'Could Have Been Stopped'
Official report says college should have warned students of shootings
By Peter Fearon
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Posted Aug 30, 07 5:35 AM CDT
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(Newser)
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A state investigation into the Virginia Tech massacre, in which 33 students and teachers were killed, concluded that college authorities could have saved lives by acting more quickly to warn students after the first shootings. The report, released last night after the New York Times obtained a copy, also criticizes the college's failure to insure that gunman Seung-Hui Cho received counseling after a mental-hospital stay.
The killer had been briefly committed by a judge who deemed him a risk, but, in what the report calls a misunderstanding of federal privacy laws, his parents were not notified and and he was allowed to return to classes without follow-up counseling. Once the shooting began, a quicker response might have cut the death toll, the report says, but not prevented the tragedy.