Grandma's House

Just a few notes to update the Virginia Tech story:

The gunman was from South Korea, not China as some reporters were so quick to jump. Why can't people wait for the truth instead of rushing to beat everybody else with a rumor? He was a student, a senior in fact. If they had locked down the campus, they would have locked him in with other students. That wouldn't have helped at all; it may have even made things worse.

Enough of that. I want to introduce you to a real hero from yesterday... Professor Liviu Librescu. From Best of the Web:

Professor Liviu Librescu, 76, threw himself in front of the shooter when the [murderer] attempted to enter his classroom. The Israeli mechanics and engineering lecturer was shot to death, "but all the students lived--because of him," Virginia Tech student Asael Arad--also an Israeli--told Army Radio.

Several of Librescu's other students sent e-mails to his wife, Marlena, telling of how he had blocked the gunman's way and saved their lives, said Librescu's son, Joe.

"My father blocked the doorway with his body and asked the students to flee," Joe Librescu said in a telephone interview from his home outside of Tel Aviv. "Students started opening windows and jumping out."

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Librescu was a Holocaust survivor who escaped communist Romania for Israel in 1978 and moved to Virginia in 1986. By coincidence, he was murdered on Holocaust Remembrance Day.

This wonderful man held the door shut while his students jumped out the window. After surviving the Nazis and the Communists, he decided he'd had enough. Pray for his family tonight.