Mental-Health Records of Virginia Tech Killer Found

More than two years after the Virginia Tech massacre, the most deadly shooting in the nation's history, Virginia Tech officials have located gunman Seung Hui Cho's mental health records, the Collegiate Times and the Associated Press report.

Cho shot and killed 32 people on April 16, 2007, before turning one of his guns on himself. Though the quality and effectiveness of the mental-health treatment Cho received at Virginia Tech's counseling center have long been in question, records of Cho's visits to the center have been missing until now. Lawyers in a civil lawsuit found the files at a former counseling center employee's home.

Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine says the state will release the records as soon as possible and that state police are investigating how the records disappeared in the first place because it is illegal to remove confidential records from the center. Kaine also expressed disappointment that the criminal investigation into the shootings failed to uncover the files.

On the second anniversary of the shootings this past April, family members of two slain students sued the state, the school and its counseling center, several top university officials, and a local mental-health agency, claiming gross negligence in the series of events that cleared a path for Cho to carry out his killing spree.