Cho Diagnosed with Autism?

While watching clips of Cho Seung-Hui as they had first begun to flit across the internet, I mentioned to my wife that something seemed peculiar about Cho's speech. I didn't mean the content but rather his delivery and mannerism. It seemed to me that he may have had some sort of mental handicap, a suggestion my wife wasn't as certain about, yet now appears to have some basis.

Alongside my tenuous observation, an article appearing in the Mirror.co.uk now provides a possible yet critical insight into Cho, as his grandfather's sister, Kim Yang-San, relays to us in the interview:

"He was very quiet and only followed his mother and father around and when others called his name he just answered yes or no but never showed any feelings or (e)motions...Soon after they got to America his mother was so worried about his inability to talk she took him to hospital and he was diagnosed as autistic."

Such a diagnosis goes to explain an AWFUL lot about Cho and his failure or inability to engage in normal social interaction with teachers, college mates, and dorm members. A list of autism symptoms, found here, states:

"Prefers to be alone; aloof manner...Not responsive to verbal cues; acts as deaf...Speech and language absence or delays...Abnormal ways of relating to people, objects and events."

If this is the case, and Cho was in fact autistic, it signals that he may long have been thrust into interaction and positions of social responsibility that he was simply incapable of handling or even comprehending how to negotiate.

It would also seem to reveal a gross negligence on the part of his parents, and a potentially yet equally gross oversight or ignorance on the part of school and mental health officials--in both earlier and later years of his life--all of which may have significantly contributed to Cho's eventual progression toward the horrible events he has now carried out.

I have to remain skeptical that so many people could have been unaware of Cho's autism, if he was indeed diagnosed as such during his youth. How could the mental hospital he was admitted to not know or fail to recognize this? How could the schools and school officials be so flatly ignorant and unresponsive to this situation? Were there no records of this to notify them? Why did the parents fail to inform others? Or did they? Should he even have been at Virginia Tech?

If true, it seems that Cho may have been a tragic victim of his own sort, one who would only now find a truly terrible outlet for his inner delusions, frustrations, and inability to navigate situations the rest of us take for granted.