Virginia Tech Memorial Grove at Ida Lee Park

On April 16th, 2007, undergraduate student Seung-Hui Cho committed the deadliest mass shooting that had ever occurred in the United States, and what is still the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history.

Using two semi-automatic pistols, Cho executed a pair of attacks on the campus of Virginia Polytechnic and State University (Virginia Tech) that claimed the lives of 32 people and wounded 17 others. Six more people were injured when jumping out of windows trying to escape Cho’s rampage.

This terrible incident rocked the nation and spurred conversation regarding gun culture and mental health issues in the U.S. Cho had been able to purchase the guns despite his having been declared mentally ill by a Virginia special justice because he had not been institutionalized.

Virginia closed legal loopholes that had  allowed individuals who had been adjudicated as mentally unsound to purchase handguns without detection, and the measures became law at the federal level in January 2008 when President George W. Bush signed the National Instant Background Check Improvement Act, requiring gun buyer background checks to screen for legally declared mentally ill individuals who are not eligible to possess firearms.

There is a large memorial to the victims of this tragic event at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg. The memorial in Leesburg is much smaller and consists of a marker and grove in Ida Lee Park, near the entrance to adjacent Union Cemetery.