A year after Virginia shooting, gunman’s family lives in darkness

Nearly a year later, Seung Hui Cho’s parents have virtually cut themselves off from the world. Relatives from South Korea have not heard from them. They have rejected offers of help. The blinds are always drawn at their home in Centreville, Va., and several windows are papered over. “They continue to live in darkness,” said Wade Smith, a North Carolina lawyer who has been assisting the family. “I think there will come a time when they are able to speak, (but) for now, they have made it clear to me they just want to be quiet and not say anything.”

The family went into hiding the night of the shootings, according to the FBI agent, who has been a liaison between the family and law enforcement in the past year.

Sung Tae and Hyang Im rose from a dank basement apartment in Seoul, South Korea, to an upper-middle-class neighborhood in Fairfax County. They laboured six days a week as dry cleaners. Their hard work was rewarded when Sun Kyung was accepted to Princeton University. Little is known of the family’s life now except that they still live in the two-story townhouse they bought in 1997, five years after they emigrated. Neighbours say they are rarely home and work long hours. Sun Kyung, 27, works for the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor.

Relatives in Korea, who used to hear from Seung Hui Cho’s mother on major holidays, say they have not heard from her since the massacre, the deadliest shooting by an individual in US history.

The night of the tragedy, the Chos packed their bags after the agent warned them that they would be the subject of intense public scrutiny. They turned off their cellphones to stay even more isolated from the public.

On April 18, when NBC aired the hate-filled video that Cho had mailed to the station, his parents and sister were as shocked as anyone. Two days later, the Chos made their only public comments. “We are humbled by this darkness,” Sun Kyung wrote in a statement released to news organizations.

Reporters who had spent days camped out at the home left, describing the townhouse as deserted and abandoned. Neighbours and others speculated the Chos had fled permanently. But months later, neighbors said, the family quietly returned to Centreville.

Aware of the Chos’ desire for solitude, several neighbors and acquaintances said they did not try to speak to the couple or offer help.

In August, the Chos granted an interview to the panel appointed by Gov. Timothy Kaine, D, to investigate the tragedy. At an undisclosed private home in Northern Virginia, they poured out their hearts to Aradhana “Bela” Sood, medical director of a children’s treatment center at Virginia Commonwealth University and a member of the Virginia Tech Review Panel.

In the emotional three-hour interview, Hyang Im described her struggle to socialize Seung Hui, who rarely spoke as a child in Korea and withdrew even more after the family came to the United States when he was 8.

Hyang Im, with her daughter translating, told Sood how she had tried unsuccessfully to find friends for her son. She later turned to psychiatry, despite the stigma of mental illness.

The parents told Sood of their shock to learn, after his death, of his violent writings; the red flags raised by professors and students who said they were afraid of him; and his brief hospitalisation after a judge determined he was a suicide risk.

Had they known, “we would have taken him home and made him miss a semester to get this looked at,” the Chos told Sood. “But we just did not know … about anything being wrong.”

On Wednesday, a shaken Virginia Tech community will gather at the university to remember the students and professors who died in Cho’s rampage exactly one year before. There will be a candlelight vigil at dusk. Each of Cho’s 32 victims will be honoured. Cho’s name will not be mentioned.