CHO

WASHINGTON (Reuters):

The South Korean gunman who killed 32 people and himself at Virginia Tech university had lived in the United States for 14 years but neighbours and fellow students said they knew very little about him.

Before committing the worst shooting rampage in modern U.S. history on Monday, Cho Seung-Hui left a rambling note lashing out at 'rich kids', 'debauchery' and 'deceitful charlatans' on campus, the Chicago Tribune reported yesterday.

"You caused me to do this," Cho wrote, ABC News quoted law enforcement sources as saying.

The 23-year-old English literature student had shown signs of unusual behaviour, including setting a fire in a dormitory room and allegedly stalking some women, said the Tribune, quoting unidentified sources close to the investigation.

It said investigators believed Cho had taken medication for depression at some point.

"He was very quiet, always by himself," Abdul Shash, a neighbour of the Cho family in Centreville, Virginia, told the paper.

He spent much of his free time playing basketball and would not respond when someone said hello to him, Shash added.

Police yesterday named Cho yesterday as the gunman responsible for the killings at the well-regarded university with 26,000 full-time students in the quiet town of Blacksburg.

Police said he appeared to have used chains to lock doors and prevent people from escaping. Survivors recounted how he went silently from room to room, calmly firing dozens of rounds at students and staff.

"This man was brutal," Dr. Joseph Cacioppo, who treated some of the wounded, told CNN. "There wasn't a shooting victim that didn't have less than three bullet wounds in them."

The dead and wounded were found in at least four classrooms and a stairwell, police said. The gunman's body was among several of his victims.

Cho was carrying a backpack with a receipt for a Glock 9mm pistol he bought in March, several media outlets reported. His other weapon was a .22-calibre pistol.

'A LONER'

Cho moved to the United States with his parents in September 1992, said Chris Bentley, a spokesman with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

As a resident alien, commonly known as a 'green card' holder, Cho could live and work indefinitely in the United States he would not be able to vote or get a U.S. passport.

Investigators searched the Cho home in Centreville but the family was not there, according to media reports.

"He was a loner and we're having difficulty finding information about him," university spokesman Larry Hincker said.

Timothy Johnson, a student in the same dormitory complex as Cho, told the Tribune people would say "hello" to him in passing but that nobody knew much about him.

Aimee Fausser, who had a room upstairs from Cho in the Harper Hall residence, said students were shocked to learn the gunman had been living among them.

"It's just frightening because he could have come back here and started shooting," she told Reuters.