The 18-year-old aspiring neurosurgeon killed in the Brown University mass shooting had been “dragged’’ by a pal to the doomed econ review session where he ended up dying, a friend revealed Friday on WJAR-TV.
Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov of Uzbekistan, a student at the Ivy League school, sent a text to another buddy about an hour before he was fatally shot: “Got dragged to Econ review,’’ he wrote with a picture of the study hall that would soon be riddled with bullets.
About an hour later, Umurzokov was fatally shot, as was student Ella Cook, 19 — while nine more students were wounded in the gunfire.
The friend who Umurzokov accompanied to the review session was among those injured in the gunfire, the dead teen’s pal, Joseph McGonagle, told the local Rhode Island outlet.
“The thing about Brown University is it was known as ‘the Happy Ivy,’” said McGonagle, who had had brunch with Umurzokov hours before the shooting and was in the library next to the targeted classroom while bullets flew.
“People didn’t ever expect anything like this to happen at ‘the Happy Ivy.’”
A 48-year-old former physics grad student at the school, Claudio Neves Valente, was identified as the shooter and killed himself days later as cops finally closed in.
Neves Valente had spent only three semesters at the prestigious institution before dropping out in 2003.
While there, he griped about everything from the quality of the fish served in the cafeterias to the supposed ease of the classes. Neves Valente, a Portuguese national, could be kind and brilliant while also a bully, a former classmate said.
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