Cho's high school classmates recall 'kid who never spoke'

Story Highlights

• Classmates recall Virginia Tech shooter as a loner who was taunted by bullies
• One says Cho Seung-Hui known as "the kid who never spoke"
• Another remembers Cho walking alone carrying his trombone

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CENTREVILLE, Virginia (CNN) -- Cho Seung-Hui's classmates at Westfield High School in Chantilly, Virginia, had a few nicknames for him.

Some knew him as "the kid who never spoke," classmate Regan Wilder told CNN.

Others who saw him walking to the bus stop called him "the trombone kid," another classmate, John Williams, recalled.

"He was just walking with his trombone, all alone," Williams said on Thursday, three days after Cho carried out the worst mass shooting by a lone gunman in U.S. history. (Honoring the victims)

Cho's former classmates said other students had crueler names for him.

They said he was often picked on and taunted because he was such a loner.

"Such a quiet, shy kid like that is such an easy target," Williams said. "And he took it and took it and took it, and built up all that anger and whatever he felt inside. Someone like that is going to explode -- it's destined to happen."

Monday morning, Cho shot and killed 30 students and professors in an engineering and classroom building on the Virginia Tech campus.

Two hours earlier, two students were killed at a dormitory, and police say the same gun was used in both slayings, although they have not been able to definitively link Cho to those slayings. (Full story)

Cho was born in South Korea in 1984. His family moved to the United States in 1992, and settled in Centreville, Virginia, where his parents worked at a dry cleaner's.

Fellow students remembered him hanging around a local basketball court, but refusing to join in the games.

Another former high school classmate said he thought he knew the reason for Cho's silence.

"I thought he was pretty normal, other than the fact I just thought he didn't know any English, that's why he never talked to anybody," said Ebram Hakim. (Watch why warning signs don't always predict behavior )

Cho's college roommates and classmates echoed the description of a tightlipped loner. The roommates said he "never spoke more than a couple of words." A student who had a writing class with Cho said efforts by other students to draw him out were rebuffed. (Full story)

Wilder, who attended middle and high school with Cho, and also went on to Virginia Tech, told CNN she wondered if anyone really knew him.

"You've got to wonder what went so wrong in his life that this was ultimately the decision he made, to get revenge for whatever it was," she said.

CNN's Sean Callebs contributed to this report.

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