19-year-old Yunsong Zhao was a student at Virginia Tech who had recently been arrested for possessing an assault rifle and trying to purchase 5000 bullets. The reason that’s illegal in this case is that Zhao is not an American citizen and under the terms of his visa, it is illegal for him to own any firearms. However, the news is even scarier than his alleged attempt to buy more bullets than any one man should own.
According to police, Zhao not only researched how to obtain a bulletproof vest, but he also had bought a car which was once used by police which he reportedly fitted with a special bumper. Zhao was arrested after a weeks-long investigation with Zhao being apprehended without incident.
Police say the University was never in danger, but my God, what the hell was Zhao planning? You don’t buy a police cruiser with some markings still on it and 5000 bullets in order to sell Girl Scout cookies. While his intended target may or may not have been the University itself, you can’t blame the students and their families for being a bit jumpy since the school was the site of one of the most violent school shootings ever. It makes me wonder if Zhao was some kind of Cho Seung-Hui acolyte.
Sadly, the infamous school shooting is not the only violent crime Virginia Tech has had to endure. Back in 2009, another Chinese student by the name of Zhu Haiyang, decapitated 22-year-old Yang Xin who was also a student from China. Zhu brutally murdered Yang Xin after she rejected Zhu’s romantic advances.
Getting back to Zhao, it will be interesting, to say the least, to see what his plans actually were. Somehow, I doubt he was getting ready to fight a war on crime.
Real Crime with Trench Reynolds 