A Day of Mourning for Va. Tech Victims

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The governor declared Friday a day of mourning for the victims at Virginia Tech as experts pored over Cho Seung-Hui's twisted writings and parents urged everyone else to focus on healing from the deadliest shooting rampage in modern U.S. history.

Churches around the country, from California to the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., planned vigils and prayer services for the 32 victims.

In Virginia, Gov. Timothy Kaine called for a moment of silence at noon. Before that, Virginia Tech alumni and supporters gathered at intersections in the Richmond area, waving maroon-and-orange flags emblazoned with the school logo, and carrying posters exhorting drivers to honk for their school. The sound of the horns showing support around them was deafening.

"We want the world to know and celebrate our children's lives, and we believe that's the central element that brings hope in the midst of great tragedy," said Peter Read, whose 19-year-old daughter, Mary Karen Read, was killed. "These kids were the best that their generation has to offer."

Peter Read and others urged television stations to stop broadcasting the hate-filled videos of Cho, the 23-year-old English major who carried out the killings, and several netwoks agreed to scale back.

As families began burying the victims, investigators worked on the evidence and looked into the warning signs in Cho's past, including two stalking complaints against him and a psychiatric hospital visit in which he was found to be a danger to himself.

Police filed a search warrant for a laptop and cell phone used by one of the first victims, Emily Hilscher, who was shot in a dormitory.

"The computer would be one way the suspect could have communicated with the victim," the warrant said, but it offered no basis for a belief that Cho might have been in contact with her.

Investigators are "making some really great progress" into determining how and why the shootings happened, Virginia State Police spokeswoman Corinne Geller said Friday. She said they hope to have something to tell the public next week.

Kaine also appointed an independent panel that includes former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge to look into how authorities handled the tragedy.

Asked Friday if the attacks had been preventable, Ridge said his "preliminary judgment would be probably not," but he said he hoped the investigation would find ways to reduce the risk in the future.

"This is a national tragedy, and we have to learn some lessons and apply them," Ridge told "The Early Show" on CBS.

Jeremy Herbstritt's family sat quietly in a worship hall in State College on Thursday as students and staff lit candles and signed a condolence banner for Herbstritt, a graduate student killed at Virginia Tech.

"We will remember" read a large sign near the front of the hall. Several students and staff wore Virginia Tech sweat shirts.

Private funeral ceremonies were held Thursday for Egyptian Waleed Mohammed Shaalan and Partahi Mamora Halomoan Lumbantoruan of Indonesia. Engineering professor Liviu Librescu, a Holocaust survivor whose family says tried to save his students amid the shooting Monday, was buried in Israel.

Cho's videos, which were mailed to NBC the morning of the killings, revealed a man angry at the world but offered little explanation of why, other than rambling tirades against rich kids, snobs and people who had wronged him.

As experts analyzed the disturbing materials, it became increasingly clear that Cho was almost a classic case of a school shooter: a painfully awkward, picked-on young man who lashed out with methodical fury at a world he believed was out to get him.

"In virtually every regard, Cho is prototypical of mass killers that I've studied in the past 25 years," said Northeastern University criminal justice professor James Alan Fox, co-author of 16 books on crime. "That doesn't mean, however, that one could have predicted his rampage."