WaPo has a disturbing story about the Virginia Tech shooter due to appear in tomorrow's paper. Seung-Hui Cho's family gave the OK to release his mental records this afternoon, and they show Cho was never treated despite a court order to get help.
The long-awaited records, which were taken home by the fired director of Cook Counseling Center, do not provide a clearer insight into the mind of the college junior who would later kill 32 students and teachers before shooting himself in the deadliest shooting by an individual in U.S. history. Instead, they provide another window into the broken mental health system that allowed him to slip through its cracks.
A female student reported him for harassment in late November. In response, a therapist assessed his mental health by phone on November 30, 2005. After another phone assessment on December 12, he came for an assessment two days later and was committed to a hospital. He was released the next day--and after that (if the records are to be believed), nothing.
A blue-ribbon panel created by Tim Kaine in response to the tragedy found that Cook mishandled Cho's records and didn't recognize obvious signs of trouble. Apparently there were some pretty egregious breakdowns in communication--for instance, nobody at Cook even knew of the treatment order.
WaPo also reveals that Cook had some pretty serious problems even before this blew up. The staff psychiatrist had gone on leave of absence in the fall of 2005 and never returned, and the center was so understaffed that students had to go as far as 45 miles to get meds.
Another equally disturbing revelation came along with the release of the report. The center's director, Robert Miller, was fired in February 2006--and inadvertently took the records of Cho and five other students with him when he cleaned out his office. He only found them after the families of two of Cho's victims sued him.
Bottom line--this appears to be a massive, massive FUBAR.