Egyptian among Virginia shooting victims
(AP)Updated: 2007-04-20 10:01
CAIRO, Egypt - Graduate student Waleed Mohammed Shaalan was planning on bringing his Egyptian family back to Virginia Tech but a rampaging gunman prevented that. The young man lost his life but was credited Thursday with acting to save a fellow student.
 Graduate student Waleed Mohammed Shaalan, right, one of the victims of the Virginia Tech massacre, is seen with his wife Amira in this undated wedding photo. Shaalan, a native of the Nile Delta town of Zagazig, had gone to Virginia last year to study for a Ph.D. in civil engineering and was hit by three bullets, including one in the head, while in a classroom building, according to Egypt's state-run Middle East News Agency. [AP]  |
The day before Monday's massacre, Shaalan called home and said he intended to visit Egypt next month and then return to Virginia with his wife and 15-month-old son who had been living in Egypt, his parents said Thursday.
The family got another call two days later. The Egyptian Embassy in Washington told them Shaalan had been one of the 32 victims in the deadliest school shooting in modern U.S. history.
"I talked to him over the internet Sunday," his mother Saadiya Abdel-Mageed Ali said in a soft and anguished voice. "He asked me to move closer to the Web camera so he can see my face better. 'I want to see your face mama!' he kept saying."
Shaalan, 32, had been at Virginia Tech since August studying for a Ph.D. in civil engineering. He was ambitious, saying he wanted to follow in the footsteps of Ahmed Zewail, an Egyptian who won the Nobel prize for chemistry in 1999, said his father, Mohammed Shaalan, 65.
"I am talking to you now and I am still in disbelief. I lost the most precious person in my life," Mohammed Shaalan told The Associated Press by telephone from his home in the Nile Delta town of Zagazig. "He used to tell me that he wants to be someone like Nobel winner Ahmed Zewail."
Randy Dymond, a civil engineering professor, said Shaalan was credited with distracting gunman Cho Seung-Hui to save the life of a fellow student.
Dymond, who attended a service for Shaalan Thursday, said the Egyptian was in the first classroom Cho attacked and was badly wounded. Cho returned to the room twice to search for signs of life.
During one of those incidents, a second student who was uninjured, was playing dead. When Shaalan noticed Cho making a move to shoot the student, the Egyptian made a "protective movement to basically decoy the killer into thinking it was him making any kind of sound instead of the survivor," Dymond said.
Dymond declined to give the name of the student who survived, but said the student wanted him to tell the story "so that the family of Waleed understands the sacrifice."
Shaalan's mother broke down when she heard Dymond's account.
"He was trying to save someone else?" she said repeatedly.
Dymond said Shaalan's body was taken to a Blacksburg mosque Thursday afternoon so classmates, teachers and friends could say goodbye before it was sent to Egypt for burial.
Egyptian newspapers published photographs of Shaalan's wedding. His wife Amira, 28, is also an engineer, Al-Ahram newspaper reported. She wore an intricately decorated white gown and veil, clutching a bouquet of pink flowers. Shaalan planned to bring Amira and his son, Khaled, to Virginia in May, his parents said.
"Why was he killed? What did he do? What is his guilt? He just wanted to continue his studies and obtain a Ph.D. He wanted to be unique in his field," said Mohammad Shaalan, a retired government official. "I can only say that a man's life is in God's hands. Thanks be to God."
Shaalan obtained his bachelor and master's degrees in civil engineering from Zagaziq University. He worked at a government research center before he receiving a scholarship to study at Virginia Tech.
"He was the simplest and nicest guy I ever knew," Fahad Pasha, Shaalan's roommate, said on the Web site of the Muslim Students Association at Virginia Tech. "We would be studying for our exams and he would go buy a cake and make tea for us."
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