April 16, 2007, was “a bizarre weather day,” Ryan recalled, “an April day with 30 mph winds, snow and paper blowing across campus. The wind can really howl here.”  His colleague, sociology professor James Hawdon, continued with the chronology of that morning:

Cho wakes up early. At about 6:47 a.m. he’s spotted outside West Ambler Johnston dormitory. At 7:02 Emily Hilscher arrives at her dorm room, which was her routine. Over the weekend she would spend time with her boyfriend and he would drop her off on Monday morning. About 7:15 Cho has somehow entered West AJ and he shoots Emily. Ryan Clark, the RA who rooms next to her, hears a commotion, comes over to help her, at least that’s what the police believe, and is also shot. About 7:20 the VT police receive a call. They’re there in about 4 minutes.

According to a revised Review Panel chronology issued in December 2009, university police were quickly joined by officers from the Blacksburg police department and Virginia State Police. At 8:14 a.m. Hilscher’s roommate arrived and told detectives that Emily’s boyfriend owned guns and practiced with them. Almost immediately, Wendell Flinchum, the chief of the Virginia Tech police department, contacted administrators with that new information.  Hawdon continued:

Chief Flinchum informs them that they have a suspect. During this time officers are searching for the boyfriend. They search the parking lots, they’re searching his home, and they cannot find him. They become confident that he had indeed left campus, which he had. At 9:01 Cho is at the Blacksburg post office mailing what becomes the infamous package that he sends to NBC news.  At 9:05 the second period of classes begins. Between 9:15 and 9:30 Cho is spotted outside Norris Hall. This period of time is when he was chaining the doors shut, although no one reports having seen him actually chain the doors up.

At 9:24 the police finally find Emily Hilscher’s boyfriend off campus in his pickup truck. They begin questioning him and at that point begin to get a little concerned. At 9:26 the university administration sent an e-mail to everyone on campus, informing us that there had been a shooting at West Ambler Johnston and urging us to be cautious, to basically stay put. As this is happening, the police perform a residue analysis on Emily Hilscher’s boyfriend. It comes back negative and they now know they have not correctly framed the incident. At the same time Cho goes into Norris Hall and commits the deadliest school shooting to date, killing 30 and wounding 13. He starts shooting at 9:40. At 9:42 the police receive a 911 call, they are there at 9:45. The doors were chained and it took them five minutes to shoot through one of the machine shop doors and enter the building.

My office is about 300 yards from Norris Hall. I have a direct view. There were dozens of officers there by 9:50, Virginia Tech police, Blacksburg police, Montgomery county police and state police. Shortly afterward there were also FBI agents. At this time a second e-mail goes out to the campus, advising that a gunman is loose on campus and everyone should stay in buildings and away from windows. At 9:51 Cho shoots himself. At 10:17 we get a third e-mail saying classes are cancelled and we are told again to stay inside, lock our doors and keep away from the windows. At 10:52 we get another e-mail, informing us for the first time that there were multiple victims at Norris Hall.

Ned Benton pointed out that the timeline lists official communications, but that private, unofficial messages were also an important means of spreading information. Media reports too often reached the campus community well before e-mails from the university administration. Several participants offered examples:

John Ryan: Our executive secretary in our department has a daughter who works in Burruss Hall, and the daughter called with the information about the West AJ shooting probably 20 minutes to a half an hour before the first e-mail came out. Then people in the office started listening to the police scanner…

Megan Armbruster: My brother called me from Denver before I got anything official because CNN was reporting it before anyone else.

Armbruster, who subsequently became recovery coordinator for both the Dean of Students Office and the Division of Student Affairs, recalled that as soon as news of the shootings began to spread,

Families were immediately calling, texting, trying to get hold of their students and eventually 32 families weren’t hearing from their kids or spouses and they started driving to campus. Families of the injured students were going through a similar process. They were calling friends and friends were saying they’re at the hospital. Identifications began and there’s the story of one parent who was calling all over and finally got hold of a nurse who said we don’t have identification or a picture of your son. The mother had a picture of her son on her cell phone and sent it to the nurse on her cell phone so that the nurse could see the picture and say yes, your son’s here at the hospital.

Turning to the background of the April 16 events, Ryan gave a summary of an official chronology, compiled by the Virginia Tech Review Panel, that starts with Seung Hui Cho’s birth in Korea and his immigration with his family to the United States:

Cho exhibits difficulties in grade school and high school, but it seems to have been dealt with quite effectively by mental health professionals. And one of the things you’ll notice in the report is that his family seems to be quite supportive, concerned, involved in his life, at least until he gets to Virginia Tech.

His freshman year here seemed to go pretty well. No reports of any major incidents. Sophomore year became more problematic. He came in as a business information technology major, but he switches to English. He exhibits quite a bit of interest in writing. He writes a novel and submits it for publication and it’s rejected and the report implies that might have been a significant incident in his life. Junior year is when the problems seem to become much more apparent. His family sees him withdrawing. He has problems in the poet Nikki Giovanni’s class. She is a very imposing powerful teacher and powerful person, so to read that she’s intimidated by a student is really quite shocking. Dr. Lucinda Roy was chair of the English department at that time, and she begins to petition the various offices on campus for help with the student. At the same time she takes him on as a student because Nikki Giovanni doesn’t want him in her class anymore.

Just before New Year of 2006, he’s admitted under a TDO [temporary detention order] to St. Albans hospital in Radford, 12 miles from here. He is evaluated the next day and released after I think two or three independent evaluations that he’s not a danger to himself or others. Under the family protection act, FERPA, his parents are not involved or informed of any of these difficulties, including the TDO, given his age and so on. So then we’re into the spring semester. The weapons, the ammunition are purchased. From my reading of the report, his contact with mental health services has stopped at this point.