Thousands of students expected to gather at UC Riverside to honor UC Santa Barbara students killed last week
More than 1,000 UC Riverside students and faculty members are expected to gather tonight under the campus’s Bell Tower for a memorial service honoring the six UC Santa Barbara students murdered last week by a deranged man.
The UCR candlelight vigil is scheduled for 8 p.m. and will follow or coincide with vigils throughout the UC system.
“We join our sister campuses in mourning the loss of six students and the injury of others at UC Santa Barbara,” UCR Chancellor Kim Wilcox said Tuesday. “Such tragedies touch us deeply, and we express our profound sympathy to the entire UCSB community, and especially to the families and friends of those who were lost.”
Police say 22-year-old Elliot Rodger fatally stabbed his three roommates at an Isla Vista apartment complex Friday, then went on a shooting rampage, randomly killing three other students in the vicinity of the UCSB campus.
The mentally disturbed man left behind a 137-page screed, railing mostly against women, whom he perceived as conspiring to deprive him of sex.
Victims of Rodger’s deadly rampage were identified as:
— George Chen, 19;
— Katherine Cooper, 22;
— Cheng Yuan “James” Hong, 20;
— Christopher Michaels-Martinez, 20;
— Veronika Weiss, 19; and
— Weihan “David” Wang, 20.
Rodger shot himself before police arrived. The 13 people wounded in the attack remain hospitalized in conditions ranging from fair to good, according to published reports.
The massacre bore shades of a February 2001 act of random violence perpetrated by UCSB freshman David Attias, who floored his 1991 Saab, speeding down an Isla Vista roadway full of pedestrians, killing four, including a brother and sister. Attias was ruled insane and sent to a state mental hospital, from which he has since been released.
