Virginia Tech Shootings:

Mistaken Identity

For an amazing twelve hours after the incident occurred, Cho Seung-hui was not blamed for, or even linked to the shootings - an innocent VTech engineering student named Wayne Chiang was instead pegged as the killer, much to his dismay.

Wayne is of Chinese descent, collects guns, is a Virginia Tech student and was mildly depressed after recently splitting up with his girlfriend. A rumour was started on the internet naming him as the shooter. Picking up on erroneous online chatter through blogs, Facebook and Livejournal, TV stations across the US cited his name as the suspected killer and thus, Wayne Chiang was named and shamed.
“I am not the shooter,” posted Wayne on his Livejournal blog.

“Through this experience, I have received numerous death threats, slanderous accusations, and my phone is out of charge from the barrage of calls. Local police have been notified of the situation.”

However, the rumours did not stop and Wayne’s journal was flooded with comments, messages and page hits - he received over 371,000 visitors in the second day - increasing a rather substantial amount from his usual 10.
Unfortunately for Wayne, for many the rumours did seem to fit and his hundreds of blog posts featuring photographs of him posing with his huge gun collection did not aid the situation.

Even when the videos made by Cho Seung-hui were sent to news networks, some stations continued to use Wayne’s pictures to illustrate their reports - with CTV News even mixing Wayne’s photos in with Cho Seung-hui’s video.
“I must be falling off my rocker, but this is absolutely unbelievable,” said Wayne when he saw the report.

“To be misidentified once as a homicidal shooter was hell. To be labelled again within three days? That is unacceptable. CTV will have you to believe that Asians with guns all look the same. You can clearly see my picture being identified as the shooter twice. No apology or notice of clarification has been issued by this network.”

“As evidenced by the interview , I think we know the stance on firearms by this network. So which is it? Is this them filling the air with more ‘terrifying images’? Or do they think that Asians ‘all look same’? Either way, I don’t think I’ll like the answer.”

Wayne’s name was finally cleared once and for all three days after the incident - when he was interviewed live on air by ABC News.

“Right now pretty much the internet thinks it is me … I am just interested in trying to clear my name,” Wayne explained to the viewing US public.

He also explained to the newscasters that he believes more students should be allowed to carry guns on campus, and if they had, this incident may have been avoided.

“I am a firm believer that if Virginia Tech students were allowed to conceal-carry, this situation could have been ended sooner.”

Editorial - May 2007