Police to examine Cho?s cellphone records

Authorities sought Cho’s cellphone records on the chance he warned someone about what would become the nation’s worst mass shooting in modern history. They also hope to glean any relevant information from his e-mail and that of Emily Hilscher, one of the first two victims.

“Seung-Hui Cho is known to have communicated by cellular telephone and may have communicated with others concerning his plans to carry out attacks on students and faculty at Virginia Tech,” police wrote Friday in an affidavit seeking records from Verizon Wireless.

Another possible clue: his phone calls home to his parents. The affidavit states that Cho made regular calls home on Sunday evenings.

Police also sought warrants for Virginia Tech e-mail records in their hunt for a connection between Cho and Hilscher, who was killed at West Ambler Johnston Hall.

Another affidavit sought Cho’s records from the student health center, and police obtained his medical and counseling files. The contents of the affidavits were first reported by ABC News.com.

Meanwhile, friends and relatives of Hilscher and Ryan Clark, the other student killed at the dorm, memorialized them Saturday at services in Virginia and Georgia. Services also were held for student Reema Samaha, one of 30 people Cho killed at Norris Hall, a classroom building where he committed suicide.

Cho’s family slipped back from the spotlight a day after issuing a powerful apology for his actions.

His sister, Sun-Kyung Cho, said she and her parents are “living a nightmare.”

“We are humbled by this darkness,” she wrote in a statement issued Friday to The Associated Press. “We feel hopeless, helpless and lost.”

It was the family?s first public comment since Monday’s massacre.

?I actually feel sympathy towards their family,” said Virginia Tech freshman Andrea Hacker, 19. ?It?s got to be tragic for them as well. They?re going through just as much grief as we are.?

Cho’s sister said her family will cooperate fully and “do whatever we can to help authorities understand why these senseless acts happened. We have many unanswered questions as well.”

While Cho clearly was seething and had been taken to a psychiatric hospital more than a year ago as a threat to himself, investigators are still trying to establish exactly what set him off.