Students and community members gathered for a vigil on Wednesday to honor the victims of an active-shooter incident at Brown University earlier this week.
As part of an Ivy League-wide vigil on Dec. 17, around 15 students from Penn and Brown assembled with candles near the Split Button sculpture outside of Van Pelt-Dietrich Library. Two students from Brown spoke about the Dec. 13 shooting — which killed two individuals and injured nine others — before attendees observed a moment of silence for the victims.
“We were known as the happy Ivy,” said Jack DiPrimio, a graduate student at Brown who lives in the Philadelphia area, during the vigil. “Brown is really tight. Everyone knows everyone.”
Another Brown student, who requested anonymity and attended the vigil while staying in Philadelphia over winter break, told attendees that, before the shooting, he considered Brown “a safe haven for community and togetherness.”
“Brown is a very tight-knit community, and even though I didn’t know any of the people who were victims of the shooting … it’s still a tragic loss for everyone in the grand community,” the student told The Daily Pennsylvanian after the ceremony. “We’ve been robbed of two very valuable community members who could have been friends in the future, or could have seen something that they do good in the world, or good at Brown itself.”
DiPrimio said that he had grown close to Mukhammad Umurzokov, one of the victims of the shooting, after the two met at a book lecture in September.
“I was a grad student, and he was a freshman, so I felt a little bit protective of him, and I would often check in on him,” DiPrimio told the DP. “He would ask me questions, just like advice, to vent, to talk about anything.”
DiPrimio added that Umurzokov and Ella Cook — the second victim of the incident — should not be “remembered as just victims.”
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“They are incredibly accomplished, smart people that should be on your mind, and I hope it advocates some of you students at Penn to make a positive change,” he said in an interview with the DP.
Following the shooting, Penn’s Division of Public Safety told the DP that the University increased police presence on campus and is “actively monitoring” the situation. Several other Ivy League universities also heightened their security measures.
On Dec. 14, Penn President Larry Jameson addressed the incident at Brown and highlighted the University’s wellness resources in an email to the campus community.
