BY DAVID RESS

Times-Dispatch Staff Writer

Virginia Tech says tonight it will eventually let the public see some records of the April 16, 2007, massacre that it had said it would keep private.

Those include at least some documents of top Tech officials' emergency Policy Group meeting on the morning of April 16 -- records that Tech spokesman Larry Hincker said last week were not to be in the public archive called for by the settlement.

It will also include Cho's academic records but not his health records.

It will not include 911 calls from that day, Hincker said this evening.

The state's settlement last month with families of the April 16 victims said it would waive its rights to keep records confidential.

Families said they were upset by Hincker's statements last week that Policy Group records and records about Cho would not be put in a public archive.

All but one set of notes from the Policy Group and a box of records about Cho were withheld from the university's response to a Richmond Times-Dispatch Freedom of Information Act request for documents submitted to the families' lawyers.

The newspaper's review last week of 20,000 pages of documents the university did release showed there was an unlocked door to Norris Hall on April 16 -- police unsuccessfully tried three doors Cho chained shut and had to shoot out a lock to get inside the building while the killings were going on.

The documents also suggest a connection Cho may have had with the fourth floor of West Ambler Johnston Hall, the site of his first two killings. The documents additionally disclosed that counseling center records about Cho were "inadvertently destroyed."

Contact David Ress at dress@timesdispatch.com