WORLD / Victims |
International death toll in Virginia Tech massacre(Agencies)Updated: 2007-04-18 09:53 LACKSBURG - An Israeli survivor of the Holocaust who was shot dead as he tried to protect his students. An Indian professor of civil and environmental engineering who had devoted his life to the teaching community. A Lebanese student who loved dancing and wanted to help make the world a better place by studying international relations. A Canadian teacher of French who had moved to the United States with her husband, a fellow academic. A Peruvian student who decided to switch colleges from Florida to Virginia Tech because it was more prestigious. Cho Seung-Hui's murderous killing spree left an international roll call of the dead, reflecting the apparently indiscriminate nature of his chillingly methodical slaughter. Although Virginia authorities were yet to publicly identify every one of the 32 victims, details about the fatalities gradually emerged on Tuesday, from Beirut to New Delhi, from Tel Aviv to Ottawa. Among the dead was Liviu Librescu, a 76-year-old Israeli professor of engineering and mathematics, who had survived the horrors of the Holocaust as a teenager in Romania. Reports said Librescu died trying to block Cho's entry to his classroom, buying his students precious time as they scrambled to force open windows and jump to safety from two storys up. Rabbi Marvin Hier, of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, described Librescu's death as "unbelievably" ironic, coming as the world marked Holocaust Memorial Day. "Here's a Holocaust survivor who lived through the period when so many stood by silently and did nothing," Hier said. "When evil stopped at his door and he saw this murderer was going after his students, he decided that he would not be a bystander. It's quite remarkable." While student witnesses testified to the circumstances surrounding Librescu's death, the relatives of other victims were looking for answers. Joseph Samaha, whose daughter Reema was one of two Lebanese students to die on Monday, said he still had not been allowed to formally identify her body. He had feared the worst after frantic telephone calls to his daughter's cell phone on Monday morning were not returned, and he later discovered she was taking a French lesson in the Norris building when Cho struck. Samaha's last contact with Reema was on Sunday, when he visited the university with his wife to watch his daughter perform in a dance event. "She was a young lady that was growing in every way," Samaha told CNN. "She found her niche here at the university. She loved what she was doing." Samaha said his daughter wanted to be an urban planning major with a minor in international relations "because she thought she could solve the problems of the world." The mother of 21-year-old Peruvian student Daniel Perez Cueva was still struggling to accept her son's death. "I still cannot make sense of it," Betty Cueva told Peruvian radio in Lima. "I want to believe that my son is at the university and will come home." In India, the family of G.V. Loganathan, a 51-year-old professor of civil engineering, spoke of their grief after the academic was named among the dead. "He devoted his life to the teaching community. It's very sad that he has to lose this life," Loganathan's brother G.V. Palanivel told the private NDTV network from the southern state of Tamil Nadu. In Ottawa, Prime Minister Stephen Harper addressed parliament as Canadian teacher Jocelyne Couture-Nowak was confirmed among the dead. Couture-Nowak had moved to Virginia Tech with her husband, a horticulture professor. |
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