Thursday, 4:30 PM
Saugus student in same class as Virginia Tech gunman
By Suzanne Smalley, Globe Staff
Saugus native Ross Alameddine knew the gunman who killed him at Virginia Tech, often sitting next to him in an English class last fall about the genre of horror, classmates said Friday.
Justin Keyser, said Alameddine, a 20-year-old sophomore, so dominated the class with his wise-cracking, sweet-natured personality that his classmates are mourning his death in part by remembering him for his attempts to reach out to their strange, solitary classmate, Seung-Hui Cho.
In an email, another student in the class told Keyser she recalled Alameddine trying to engage Cho in friendly conversation. "She told me Ross would try and talk to him and he would be unresponsive," said Keyser, a 21-year-old senior from Virginia and like Cho an English major.
Keyser said his friend seemed concerned that news reports about Cho's violent writings would cast the English department in a negative light and wanted to get the word out that classmates, especially Alameddine, tried to help him.
"She wanted people to know people were reaching out and being friendly," Keyser said.
There is no evidence that Cho, a 23-year-old senior, targeted Alameddine, who was gunned down as he sat in French class. But their shared class, first reported Friday by The New York Times, is the first time that one of the 32 victims of Monday's massacre has been linked to the gunman.
A university spokesman declined to comment on the fact that Alameddine and Cho shared a class, saying that any possible ties between the killer and his victims remain under investigation.
Lauren Moscater, a 21-year-old senior also in the horror class, said Cho behaved strangely, writing his name down as "question mark" on the attendance sheet and refusing to introduce himself to other students when the professor asked everyone to say hello the first day.
Moscater said she sat in a different part of the classroom from Cho and cannot be sure that Alameddine spoke with him, though she said she would not be surprised.
"If he had an opinion, he would express it," she said of Alameddine. "He definitely is someone who stuck out in class....who went to college and got the most out of it."
Cho, on the other hand, sat near the back of the room wearing sunglasses and a hat, maintaining a stony silence, Moscater said in a telephone interview from her home in Long Island, N.Y.
