From safety of S'pore school, student
is plunged into heart of violence at V
Tech
April 21,
2007
HE spent most of his schooling years
cocooned in the safety of the Singapore school system.
Then he went to Virginia Tech - and experienced his first brush
with mindless gun violence.
Undergrad Kevin Lee's years at Gan Eng Seng Secondary and then at
StAndrew's JC were mostly uneventful.
On Monday, however, he was just 15minutes away from the massacre
that claimed 32 lives at the university.
Cho Seung-Hui, a US student of Korean descent, went on a shooting
rampage and then shot himself.
The place where the killings took place was where Mr Lee, 22, was
headed to on Monday morning. He was about to board a bus to school
when a second alert was sounded. It stopped the bus he was about to
take.
His close shave has left him full of 'what ifs'. Would he have been
shot, too, if it'd been a Friday, when he had class at Norris Hall?
Would he have had the courage to save other lives?
The final year electrical engineering student told The New Paper
from his off-campus apartment in Blacksburg: 'Like many, I have
thought of heroic situations where I could have attempted to stop
the shooter. But you never know in situations like that.
'Some of the survivors of the incident said that they had to play
dead during the shooting. I might have done that too.'
He had also attended a number of classes in Norris Hall, where most
of the killings took place, in his first and second years.
The New Paper was put in touch with Mr Lee through the president of
the Singapore Students' Association at the University of
Virginia.
His Burmese flat-mate, Nyan Htet Win, also a former Gan Eng Seng
student, chose to stay put in the apartment (See report on page
4.)
During those anxious and confusing hours after the bloodbath, Mr
Lee's parents in Singapore were asleep while his aunt, who lives in
Virginia, was fraught with worry.
She tried calling him but the networks were jammed. They
communicated through e-mail.
'When it happened, my aunt's employee told her about it,' said
MrLee. 'I sent e-mails to my family in Singapore. They were
sleeping and didn't know about what had happened.'
His mother later called to check on him.
Said Mr Lee: 'She was a bit afraid so I tried to tell her briefly
what was happening. She asked me to be careful.'
She did not ask him to return to Singapore as he is returning next
month for his summer break. He will graduate in December. His
parents could not be reached for comment.
Mr Lee, was born in the US and is a US citizen. His family moved to
Singapore when he was 2 and he grew up here. His father is
Singaporean, while his housewife mother is from Taiwan.
He enrolled at Virginia Tech in August 2003 after leaving
SAJC.
On Monday, he got ready to go to school like normal. But before he
left, he read an e-mail to students telling them about a shooting
incident.
Mr Lee later found out it was referring to the first of two
killings of students in a campus dormitory.
He didn't react because he thought the first alert was over a
another minor incident. Last August, there was another shooting
when an escaped prisoner tried to hide on the campus.
'I didn't think much of it because, like the previous incident, I
thought it was contained,' he said.
He thought he would miss the bus as it was already at the bus-stop
when he looked out of his window.
'But when I went down, it was still there. I saw some students
milling around,' said Mr Lee.
'The driver was also standing outside the bus, so I figured it had
something to do with the shooting.'
An alert had been sent out to all bus drivers to stop where they
were until orders were given.
Mr Lee then decided to go home. He rushed straight to his computer
and found a second, more chilling e-mail from school
administrators.
It was about a second shooting.
'We were told to stay indoors,' he recalled.
He turned to Fox News online as he doesn't have cable TV.
Mr Lee recalled: 'My room-mate was home and we followed the news.
First, it was 20 (people killed), then it became 32. We couldn't
believe it was happening in our school.
'Before the August incident, I never thought these things would
happen on campus. We are situated in the mountains, and the town is
a quiet and nice place.'
ONLINE FRENZY
He has been glued to his computer - his main source of information
for the past few days. Friends in Singapore and the UK have also
been chatting with him online about the shooting.
Soon after the massacre, there was a frenzy of e-mails. People were
trying to account for friends and trying to figure out who the
victims were, he said.
Mr Lee said: 'I received about 30e-mails. Everyone was encouraging
each other to stay strong. All my friends are fine, but I know
friends who know friends who were victims.'
Then there is the fear of a backlash against Asians.
His friends prepared him for possible hate mails, while the Korean
and Chinese associations sent out notices telling students to alert
them if any one tried to harm them.
'There might be people who'd go out and do that but I don't care
for such people,' said Mr Lee, adding that he wasn't afraid.
'The community is safe, and I feel that the school and police
reacted well.'
Still, after he drove out alone to buy dinner on Tuesday night, his
mother told him to be careful and not to go out alone again.
On the way home that night, he tried driving to campus but the
roads were closed. Classes have been stopped for a week, and Norris
Hall is shut for the rest of the school year.
'I imagine going back to school would be weird,' he said.