The person who opened fire in a classroom at Brown University killed two young students. Communities are mourning Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov and Ella Cook as the hunt for their killer continues.
AILSA CHANG, HOST:
In an effort to find who was responsible for the deadly campus shooting at Brown University, police in Rhode Island released new enhanced images of the man they believe was involved. They describe the suspect as about 5 foot 8 with a stocky build. The FBI has also offered a $50,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of the shooter. Joining us now is one of the reporters from member station Ocean State Media. David Wright has been following this case for us. Hi, David.
DAVID WRIGHT, BYLINE: Hi, Ailsa.
CHANG: So what more can you tell us about this new image?
WRIGHT: Well, with the gunman still on the loose, police are hoping that somebody out there will recognize this person they describe as a person of interest. The new image comes from doorbell camera footage that has been gathered from the streets around the engineering building where the shooting took place Saturday. Some of them were taken just hours before the gunman opened fire. The grainy pictures that came out over the weekend, they showed somebody in a – dark clothes walking mostly away from the camera. The new pictures show a man wearing a mask, but you can see his eyes, his build and his gait. He even seems to limp a bit, favoring his right leg. Here’s Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha.
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PETER NERONHA: The sooner we can identify that person, the sooner we can, I think, blow this case open.
CHANG: In the meantime, I know that you’ve been trying to find out more about the two students who were killed in the shooting. What can you tell us about them?
WRIGHT: Well, let me preface by saying that a lot of folks have left campus, and of course, people are grieving. For 19-year-old Ella Cook, the sophomore from Alabama, I reached out to the campus Republicans, to her church, to the sorority where she was a member – Alpha Chi Omega – even to her old high school in Birmingham, Alabama. So far, I’ve struck out on that front. But I did manage to speak with friends of 18-year-old Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov. He is – here’s one of his freshman classmates, Shane Toomey.
SHANE TOOMEY: Mukhammad wanted to be a neurosurgeon, and he was pre-med bound, but he also just loved learning. He could hold a conversation with anybody about just about anything and then pivot to something entirely different. And I am not like that, and so it was really incredible to get to be friends with somebody like him and feel so seen even by somebody who seems to be friends with every single person you walk by on a campus of thousands of people.
WRIGHT: Case in point, another of his friends, a first-year graduate student in political science, Jack DiPrimio, told me that the two of them met first at a lecture that they both attended at Brown’s Watson Institute of Public Affairs, and they soon became friends.
JACK DIPRIMIO: I thought he was a political science student because he was very knowledgeable about politics. But it turns out he was, like, really interested in STEM. And I was shocked, and I was like, wow, this is a quintessential whiz kid.
CHANG: I was – I’ve just been so struck by how beloved this student was. I understand that there was a surprising detail in all of this. This was the case of someone being in the wrong place at the wrong time, right?
WRIGHT: Exactly. Remember, the shooting took place at an exam review session for a popular economics course. But here’s the thing – Mukhammad Umurzokov wasn’t even taking that class. Three of his friends told me that he was just there to hang out with a classmate and learn something new. Here, he had three more finals coming up this week – tough subjects like chemistry and evolutionary bio – but he spent his Saturday afternoon at an exam review session for economics, a course he wasn’t even enrolled in. I think the point to underscore here is that this was an exceptional young man, a scholarship kid. He worked at Wawa’s convenience store to save up money for a laptop, but he was hoovering up everything Brown has to offer.
CHANG: So devastating. That is David Wright from Ocean State Media. Thank you so much, David.
WRIGHT: Thank you.
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