Report faults Virginia Tech response in shootings

WASHINGTON, Aug 30 (Reuters) Virginia Tech University officials should have been quicker to notify students and faculty about two killings on campus hours before the deadliest shooting rampage in modern US history, according to a state report released today.

Criticizing the university's response, the state panel convened by Gov. Tim Kaine said lives could have been saved if officials had issued an alert after student Seung-Hui Cho shot his first two victims in a dormitory on the morning of April 16.

Two hours later, Cho turned up on the other side of campus, where he killed 30 other students and teachers, methodically gunning them down in a classroom building.

The report, released on Kaine's Web site, said university police concluded prematurely that their initial lead in the first shootings was good. Police had pursued another suspect they believed was no longer on the campus.

''The VTPD (Virginia Tech Police Department) erred in not requesting ... a campus-wide notification that two persons had been killed and that all students and staff should be cautious and alert,'' said the report by the eight-member panel, which included former US Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge.

A Virginia Tech review last week said the university should step up counseling for troubled students and monitor those who may turn violent.

But the state report said Virginia Tech officials missed numerous indications of Cho's problems because they misinterpreted federal privacy laws as forbidding any exchange of a student's mental health information.

The report found campus police knew of Cho's history of bizarre behavior and his stay at a mental health facility but the information never reached university officials working with troubled students.

''No one knew all the information and no one connected the dots,'' the report said.

Despite what school officials believed, federal privacy laws would have allowed for the communication of some information about his problems to local, state and campus police, the report said.

''The system failed for lack of resources, incorrect interpretation of privacy laws, and passivity,'' it said.

Although Cho's motives remained unclear, he had fantasies about the 1999 shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado in which two students killed 13 people.

REUTERS PD PM1746