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12.16.2007

suicide(?) at virginia tech

I just heard about the recent death of a Korean American student at Virginia Tech... Daniel Sun Kim was found dead in his car in a parking lot, with a gunshot wound to his head. According to police, no foul play is suspected, and the medical examiner's office says the wound was consistent with a suicide. However, this article, from The Korea Times, suggest that perhaps there's more to his death than simply suicide. Kim's family members are convinced that there's something else going on, and at the very least the police are engaged in some sort of cover-up. Daniel's sister Jeannette particularly has issues with the details given by police in the Roanoke Times story. The following message was forwarded along to me, copied from her Facebook profile:
as you all may know,
my brother passed away over the weekend.
only my close friends know the details of how he passed,
but i will assure each and every one of you that it was no accident and it was not of natural causes. he was found in his car in a shopping center in christiansburg (close to blacksburg).

the following days (after i found out),
i went online and googled my brother's name or the situation that he was put in. nothing surfaced. a few days later, i googled again. still nothing.
finally today, i find an article through the roanoke times.
http://www.roanoke.com/news/nrv/wb/143522

the information that the university spokesman (larry hincker) stated was so false it disgusted me. first they received a phone call from a friend of my brother's, who called saying he was worried about him cause he had been depressed lately. my brother's friend received no response and my brother received no help. then they received an email from his friend, but they didn't do enough to follow up on it. they decide to go speak to him 2 weeeks AFTER the email. the police say there's a language barrier between my parents and them, there is NO language barrier. my dad has been here for 31 years and he speaks better english than me. his vocabulary is so much more articulate than mine and he is much more intellectual. my dad requested to view the police report THREE times, the police failed to respond.. why? because there IS NO report. the fact of the matter is, virginia tech and the police are doing whatever they can to cover up my brother's death. ever since the virginia tech massacre, they are assuming that it was the fact that my brother was korean. they believe that it is that simple. it isn't that simple. they are mishandling this case and they are not giving my brother the dignity and honor he deserves.

he was my only brother and now everything has been sucked out of me ever since i lost him. he basically raised me. he was as much my dad as he was my brother. please help me by doing this - we (my family and i) are going to create static for the school. i would like you all (my friends) to log onto the virginia tech website and somehow post questions about this. ask them a lot of questions, so it creates an uprising within the student body. please especially ask questions like why my brother's death wasn't posted on the website for virginia tech. also ask why it has been kept a secret until now, why there is false information being posted on the roanoke times. i would like you all to especially email LARRY HINCKER at hincker@vt.edu.

if you would like to help me and my family, please do that.
and please tell all your friends to do so also.
do whatever you can.
i want my brother to be honored and recognized,
not brushed under a rug as if he meant nothing.
While I do not know Jeannette personally, and I can't vouch for the information given here, it's obvious at the very least there are still many questions that need to answered, and disputes to be laid to rest. This guy's tragic death requires and deserves much more scrutiny than it's received thus far. For his family's sake. And if there is indeed a cover-up happening here, and it's somehow related to the Seung Hui Cho shooting, it needs to be brought out into the open. Ask questions where they need to be asked, and don't let this get brushed under the rug.