Tech shooting documents posted online

BY CARLOS SANTOS Media General News Service
Published: November 17, 2008

Thousands of documents that tell the story of the Virginia Tech massacre are now easily available to the public thanks to a handful of students.

Justin M. Harrison, a Tech computer engineering student from Connecticut, led the effort to put about 6,000 pages on the Internet.

The papers detail events and activities of the massacre of 32 students and teachers on April 16, 2007.

The documents, which include police incident reports involving Tech killer Seung-Hui Cho, are part of about 20,000 pages released by Virginia Tech after a Freedom of Information Act request by the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

“I want to see the full truth. I want to see the full information,“ Harrison said. “It won’t be done for me until I get all the information up there so people can see with their own eyes what happened.“

Harrison said he initially received no response from Tech officials to his request to see the documents. But a second request resulted in the boxes of papers being made available in early October.

“They were only as helpful as they had to be,“ he said. “Sometimes it was like pulling teeth.“

Harrison and about 10 volunteers worked in shifts to copy the papers, which were made available in a room at Burruss Hall with a Tech official present at all times. Harrison said a Tech alumnus donated three high-speed scanners to the effort. Students scanned the papers into laptop computers.

“It took us two days,“ he said. “We tried to avoid duplications as much as possible.“

Many of the 20,000 pages are duplicates or even triplicates.

“It was an interesting process,“ Harrison said. “This was a good cause. This was a project worth doing.“

Jessica Schmale, a political-science student from Woodbridge, was one of the volunteers who helped Harrison.

“The students and faculty should know everything that went on,“ she said. “I think this will help answer questions people have.

“As part of the healing process, those questions should be answered.“

Carlos Santos is a staff writer for the Richmond Times-Dispatch.