Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov’s two sisters watched news of the shooting at Brown University on Saturday afternoon from their home in the Richmond suburb of Midlothian with a mounting sense of dread.
Mukhammad wasn’t responding to calls or texts, but as a double major in biochemistry and neuroscience, he had no reason to be in the economics study session where two people were killed and nine others wounded by a gunman. Then the sisters tracked down some of his friends through Instagram and learned the awful truth: He was in the classroom, just to be with some buddies, and — typically — he had been sitting up front.
By about 2 or 3 a.m. Sunday, a university official confirmed that Umurzokov, an 18-year-old freshman, had been killed. Ella Cook, a sophomore from Alabama, was also killed in the attack, elected officials and others have said.
The search for the gunman in the Brown University shooting in Rhode Island entered a third day Monday, and officials said they were ramping up law enforcement presence on campus and in the city of Providence. The FBI announced a $50,000 reward and said the shooter should be considered armed and dangerous. “No amount of information is too small,” Ted Docks, special agent in charge of the FBI field office in Boston, said Monday.
Cook, who was studying math and French, was a bright, sweet presence on campus, her friends said. Theo Coben, a 19-year-old sophomore from the Boston area, said that when he met Cook, he immediately noticed her Southern twang and that they bonded over their regional differences, nicknaming her “Ellabama.”
Cook once offered to take him to a meeting for the school’s club for Republicans, Coben said. Despite holding different opinions on some issues from him and other more liberal students, she was open-minded and preferred to talk rather than shut a conversation down or argue, he said.
“She stuck it out, because she knew that she was learning something by being here,” he said. “And I appreciate her for doing that, because I learned something from her being here.”
Umurzokov’s family and friends described him as a studious and kind person, who went out of his way to encourage others.
“It just seems so unfair, because he tried so hard, and he went through so much, just to wind up like this,” his sister Rukhsora Umurzokova, 22, said Sunday evening in the family’s living room.
Her brother had been a straight-A student at Midlothian High School who participated in Model United Nations, Quiz Bowl and debate — a young man in a hurry to make his mark.
When he was a child, Umurzokov had a condition that required brain surgery and left him facing years of recovery, his sister said. The experience created an unshakable ambition to become a brain surgeon, she said.
He took every Advanced Placement class he could, earned a scholarship to Brown and worked at Wawa over the summer to make enough money to buy a laptop, according to his two sisters.
“He didn’t get any outside tutoring or anything. He did everything himself,” Umurzokova said. “And then he was so excited to go to Brown this fall. He was saying, like: ‘This is the best year of my life. I’m so happy here.’ He had just visited us at Thanksgiving.”
The family had put a Brown University sign in the front yard of their home. They moved to Midlothian in 2011 from Brooklyn, seeking a safer and quieter lifestyle, the sisters said. They had emigrated from Uzbekistan two years before, and all became U.S. citizens, Umurzokova said.
Their mother is a nurse. Their father owns a trucking company and drives long-haul.
After planning and saving for years, her parents flew out Saturday morning with other relatives for an Umrah pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia. Umurzokova and her younger sister reached them by phone when their plane landed in Egypt for a layover to tell them their brother was missing, then broke the news of his death when the couple landed in Saudi Arabia.
The parents immediately returned to New York, where Umurzokova’s husband was driving to meet them at the airport and take them to Rhode Island.
They are “devastated,” Umurzokova said. So much hope had been placed on her brother. “We all have that, like, American Dream,” she said. “And my parents have been telling us from the beginning, like, ‘You guys have to do these great things.’ … It’s just such a loss.”
Umurzokov was a funny, magnetic presence who tried to show up for his friends, said Eno Thomson-Tribe, a Brown freshman from Los Angeles. Just two weeks after meeting, Umurzokov attended his wind symphony concert, said Thomson-Tribe, who plays the French horn.
The day before the shooting, they talked about holiday plans while eating noodle bowls at one of the dining halls on campus. Umurzokov made the 15-minute walk with him to the school’s music library on the southern border of campus in 35-degree weather, even though it was not on his way.
His voice breaking, Thomson-Tribe said that when they parted ways later that afternoon he told his friend: “See you tomorrow. … And then I never did.”
Umurzokov’s family has established a GoFundMe.
Umurzokov’s career goals were never far from his mind, said Vanessa Finder, a friend who lived on campus. When he made even a small mistake, Finder said, he would jokingly ask her, “Would you trust me as your brain surgeon?”
“No, not right now,” she would quip.
At 2:57 p.m. on Saturday, he sent her a text message: “Got dragged to econ teview,” along with a photo of the classroom’s projector that read “ECON 0110 Final Exam Review.”
A gunman opened fire in the classroom about an hour later.
Cook had strong values yet a deep curiosity about others, according to her friends. Her faith played a big part in her life and friendships on campus, said Father Justin Bolger, associate chaplain of the university.
She was among a handful of conservative students at Brown and handled disagreements with grace, said Bolger, who met her last year. “Ella was an amazing combination of sweet and strong,” he said. “She was a very brave Christian woman, which isn’t always easy on a campus like Brown.”
Cook was also part of the antiabortion student group, he said, and attended the March for Life held in January in D.C. She was a regular at the Sunday Mass held by the Brown-Rhode Island School of Design Catholic Community, Bolger said.
Bolger said he had briefly spoken to Cook’s father since her death.
Julie Foster, whose daughter Anna Bella attended high school with Cook in Mountain Brook, Alabama, remembered Cook as a bright student dedicated to her church and a talented musician who played piano at Mountain Brook High School’s annual beauty pageant.
“She was just an amazingly well-rounded young lady,” Foster said. “Everybody was so proud when she got into Brown.”
Foster’s daughter, a singer, and Cook both performed at school concerts and an annual Christmas tree-lighting event, Foster said. Cook was soft-spoken, but her kindness and music resonated. “You never heard her talking bad about people,” Foster said. “You always saw her with a big smile on her face.”
Schneider reported from Midlothian, Virginia. Gupta reported from Providence, Rhode Island. Somasundaram reported from Washington. Todd Wallack in Providence and Daniel Wu and Razzan Nakhlawi in Washington contributed to this report.
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