A fundraising campaign dedicated to an 18-year-old Uzbek-American student who was killed in a shooting at Brown University in Rhode Island has collected more than half a million U.S. dollars.
MukhammadAziz Umurzokov, who went to high school in Virginia, and another Brown student, 19-year-old Ella Cook of Alabama, died in the attack in a university building on December 13. Nine other students were injured. Law enforcement agencies are searching for the suspect and have not publicly commented on a possible motive.
One of Umurzokov’s sisters, Samira Umurzokova, set up a GoFundMe page that had drawn more than 10,000 donations totaling over $500,000 by Thursday.
“Our family is incredibly devastated by this loss. Any donations will help significantly with any expenses my family will have to face, and the rest of the funds will be donated to charity in his name,” the page reads.
Without providing personal details, it lists a William Ackman as making the top donation of $18,000.
American billionaire investor William, or Bill, Ackman, has been active in other fundraising campaigns, including the GoFundMe campaign for Ahmed al-Ahmed, a man who disarmed one of the two shooters in the attack at Sydney’s Bondi Beach that killed 15 people on December 14. Al-Ahmed was hospitalized after being shot. One of two gunmen, believed to have been inspired by the Islamic State group, was killed; the second was injured and has been charged with murder and terrorism.
Umurzokova has said that her brother, who was a first-year student at Brown, had suffered Chiari malformation, in which brain tissue extends into the spinal canal, as a child. He wanted to become a doctor so that he could help people in the same way that he was helped, she said.
“He’s a real person. He had real ambitious goals and aspirations, like anyone else would,” Umurzokova said in a CNN interview.
“I want people to know that him and the other victims are not just numbers. They’re not just statistics. They’re real people and real families are genuinely hurting like crazy because of their loss.”
Umurzokova said her parents wanted people to “hear their son’s name, see their son’s picture, instead of, you know, seeing ‘two dead nine injured.´”
Cook, the other student who was killed in the Brown shooting, was a sophomore focusing on French and mathematics-economics.
