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Gang LU

 
 
 
 
 

 

 

 

 
 
 
Classification: Mass murderer
Characteristics: Shooting rampage at the University of Iowa
Number of victims: 5
Date of murder: November 1, 1991
Date of birth: 1963
Victims profile: Christoph K. Goertz, professor / Dwight R. Nicholson, chairman / Robert Alan Smith, assistant professor / Linhua Shan, a fellow graduate student / T. Anne Cleary, the assistant vice president for academic affairs
Method of murder: Shooting
Location: Iowa City, Iowa, USA
Status: Committed suicide by shooting himself the same day
 
 
 
 
 
 

University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa

Friday, November 1, 1991

28-year-old honor student Gang Lu believed a scholarship that went to Chan Lin-hua, a rival student, should have been his.  He believed the use of a handgun, i.e., violence, was a proper means for resolving this dispute.

In May 1991, Gang filed for a gun permit, which he received and then purchased a handgun in July.  He then spent the next several months shooting the gun at practice ranges until he was dead on target.  He also continued to plan his revenge on his college's physics department should his appeal fail. 

Professor Chris Goertz directed the research that Gang was involved in for his Ph.D.  Professor Robert "Bob" Smith collaborated with Chris on part of the research. Gang appealed the scholarship award to Chan with Dwight Nicholson, Chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Iowa, who was confident to Gang that the decision would be overturned.  However, the appealed was denied by the office of the vice-president for academic affairs. 

Around 3:40 this afternoon, during its regularly weekly meeting, Gang abruptly stands up and leaves the meeting.  He goes to the floor below to see if Dwight is in his office.  He's there, quietly working away.  Gang returns to the meeting upstairs and enters the room, carrying the handgun.  Chris is sitting closest to door and Gang kills him with a shot to the back of his head. Gang then assassinates his rival, Chan with a bullet to the forehead.  It shatters his glasses as well as taking his life. 

By now everybody else in the room is scrambling for cover - or a way out.  Bob attempts to crawl underneath the table.  Gang takes two steps toward him and shoots him in the right hand and chest.  Bob collapses to the floor and Gang leaves the room.  As he heads downstairs and reloads the gun.  He reaches Dwight's office, stands in the doorway and fires a round into his head.  The next shot missed the mark, so Gang fired another round into Dwight's head and the Chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Iowa dies at his desk. 

Gang then recalls he left Bob alive upstairs.  He rushes back upstairs and into the meeting room.  Two young scientist are crouched over Bob, loosening his clothes and talking to him.  From where Bob is on the floor, he can see Chris still sitting in his chair, his head at an unnatural angle.  Gang orders the two young scientists out of the room at gunpoint.  He returns to Bob and fires two bullets into his head, killing him.  To ensure Chris and Chan are dead, he plugs two more bullets into Chris and one more into Chan. 

Gang then leaves the building, crosses two streets, enters another building and goes to the second floor.  He talks with Miya Sioson, a young student working as a temp for Vice-President for Academic Affairs T. Anne Cleary, who denied his scholarship appeal.  Miya calls Anne out of her office and Anne talks to Gang briefly before he raises the gun and shoots her in the face.  Miya begins to stand up when Gang turns and fires on her.  The bullet tears through her mouth and spinal cord.  He reloads and climbs to the top of the stairs and begins to hear the shouts from the police.  He enters an empty conference room, takes off his jacket, folds it and then kills himself, twelve minutes after he fired the first shot.  Miya was left a quadriplegic.

Victims:

  • T. Anne Cleary

  • Chris K. Goertz

  • Chan Lin-hua

  • Dwight R. Nicholson

  • Robert "Bob" Alan Smith

 
 

Gang Lu (1963 - November 1, 1991), born in Beijing, China, (surname Lu; Chinese: 卢刚 Lú Gāng) was a graduate student in physics at the University of Iowa. On Friday, November 1, 1991, using a .38 caliber revolver and also carrying a .22 caliber handgun, he shot and killed five people on the Iowa campus in Iowa City, seriously wounded another, then committed suicide.

Those killed in Van Allen Hall, the physics department's building, were Christoph K. Goertz, a professor in the department and Lu's academic advisor; Dwight R. Nicholson, chairman of the physics and astronomy department; Robert Alan Smith, an assistant professor; and Linhua Shan, a fellow physics graduate student, also from China. T. Anne Cleary, the assistant vice president for academic affairs, was killed in Jessup Hall, the main administration building, where a student employee, Miya Rodolfo-Sioson, was shot in the spine, permanently paralyzing her arms and legs.

Lu had received his doctoral degree the previous May. Months before the shootings, he wrote five letters explaining the reasons for his planned actions. According to university officials, four of the letters are in English and were intended to be sent to news organizations. One is in Chinese. The letters have not been released to the public. According to the university, Lu said in the letters that he was angry and jealous that his doctoral dissertation had not received a prestigious academic award. Linhua Shan had received the award.

Writer Jo Ann Beard later wrote an acclaimed personal essay based in part on the killings. The essay, called "The Fourth State of Matter," was originally published in The New Yorker, appeared in the 1997 edition of Best American Essays, and was later published in her collection of personal essays, The Boys of My Youth. Beard worked as an editor for a physics journal at the university and was a colleague of the victims, working closely with several of them.

Based on Gang Lu's story, director Chen Shi-zheng made a feature film, "Dark Matter," starring Liu Ye and Meryl Streep. The film won the Alfred P. Sloan Prize at the Sundance Film Festival in 2007.

Books

  • Chen, Edwin (1995). Deadly Scholarship: The True Story of Lu Gang and Mass Murder in America's Heartland. Carol Publishing Corporation. ISBN 155972241X. 

 
 

The University of Iowa shooting was a school shooting that occurred at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa on November 1, 1991. The gunman, 28-year-old Gang Lu, had killed four faculty members and one student. He later seriously wounded another student before he committed suicide.

Perpetrator and motives

The perpetrator of the shooting was 28-year-old Gang Lu (family name Lu; Chinese: 卢刚 Lú Gāng), a former graduate student at the University of Iowa. Gang Lu was a physics and astronomy student and had received his doctoral degree from the university in May of 1991. His dissertation was titled Study of the "Critical Ionization Velocity" Effect by Particle-in-Cell Stimulation. He was still living in Iowa City after he had finished school.

In the months prior to the shooting, he wrote five letters explaining the reasons for his planned actions. According to university officials, four of the letters were in English and were intended to be mailed to news organizations. One letter was written in Chinese. The letters have never been released to the public.

Lu was infuriated because his dissertation did not receive the prestigious D.C. Spriestersbach Dissertation Prize. This prize included a monetary award of $2,500. Gang Lu believed that winning the prize would have made it easier for him to land a job.

The Spriestersbach prize was awarded to Linhua Shan for his dissertation entitled "Electromagnetic Effects in Saturn's B Ring". Both Shan and Lu were unable to find jobs in academia outside of the University of Iowa because of the recession. Normally the department would have given them both a temporary postdoctoral fellowship. Unfortunately there was only enough money to support one of them. The postdoctoral fellowship was awarded in favor of Shan as the faculty felt he deserved it more than Lu.

The shooting

On Friday, November 1, 1991, Gang Lu attended a physics and astronomy department meeting in Van Allen Hall. A few minutes after the meeting began, Lu took a .38 caliber revolver out of his jacket and began shooting. Dr. Christoph K. Goertz, Dr. Dwight R. Nicholson, Dr. Robert Alan Smith, and Linhua Shan were all slain.

Dr. Goertz was Gang Lu's dissertation chairperson and one of America's leading space plasma physicists. Dr. Nicholson was one of Lu's committee members and the chair of the physics and astronomy department. Dr. Smith was a plasma physicist and was also on Lu's dissertation committee. Linhua Shan had once been roommates with Gang Lu and was also a student of Dr. Goertz.

After the shooting at Van Allen Hall, Gang Lu walked three blocks to Jessup Hall. Lu requested to see T. Anne Cleary, the associate vice president for academic affairs, who was the grievance officer at the university. Cleary was fatally wounded and passed away the following day at University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. Miya Rodolfo-Sioson, a temporary student employee in the grievance office, was shot for reasons unknown as she was not on Lu's hit list. Rodolfo-Sioson survived but was left paralyzed from the neck down. She passed away from breast cancer in 2008.

University President Hunter Rawlings III was another person on Lu's hit list but was off campus at the time of the shooting. Gang Lu committed suicide in Jessup Hall as police arrived at the scene.

The following day, November 2, a Saturday, the University of Iowa Hawkeyes Football team, coached by Hayden Fry, would honor those that were killed by stripping their game helmets of all markings in a symbolic gesture of mourning. The Hawkeyes would go on to win their game against Ohio State.

Popular culture

Writer Jo Ann Beard later wrote an acclaimed personal essay based in part on the killings. The essay called "The Fourth State of Matter," originally published in The New Yorker, appeared in the 1997 edition of Best American Essays. It was later included in her collection of personal essays, The Boys of My Youth. Beard worked as an editor for a physics journal at the university and was a colleague of the victims. She had been close friends with Dr. Goertz.

Based on Gang Lu's story, Chinese director Chen Shi-zheng made a feature film, Dark Matter, starring Liu Ye and Meryl Streep. The film won the Alfred P. Sloan Prize at the Sundance Film Festival in 2007.

A documentary about the life of the lone survivor, Miya Rodolfo-Sioson, entitled Miya of the Quiet Strength, was released in 2009

Wikipedia.org

 
 

Gang Lu

A Chinese graduate physics student, Gang Lu resorted to a killing rampage when his department did not reward his dissertation with the award he believed it deserved.

On the afternoon of November 1, 1991, Lu went to the physics department of the University of Iowa and shot at three dissertation-committee professors and a student. Then he went to the administration building and shot the vice president for academic affairs who supervised the award-giving and a student-secretary before turning the gun on himself.

The only survivor of his academic tantrum was the student-secretary working in the administration building who is now a quadriplegic. If only Gang Lu's space-plasma theory had been a little more engaging all this would have never happened.

 
 

Iowa University student kills 4, himself

The Pittsburgh Press

November 2, 1991

A student described as a brilliant loner went on a shooting rampage at the University of Iowa after being passed over for an academic honor, killing a rival student, three professors and himself.

The student, Gang Lu, also critically wounded a university administrator and another staffer yesterday before shooting himself to death, said Ann Rhodes, vice president of university relations.

 
 

University of Iowa killer was top student, yet still loner

The Indianapolis News

November 2, 1991

IOWA CITY, Iowa - The graduate student who shot and killed a fellow physics student from China, three professors and then himself Friday was described by colleagues as brilliant, but a loner.

Gang Lu _ reportedly angry at being passed over for an academic honor _ also critically wounded a University of Iowa administrator and another staffer before shooting himself to death.

 
 

Fifth victim dies in Iowa shootings

The Boston Globe

November 3, 1991

IOWA CITY, Iowa -- A college administrator died yesterday, the fifth shooting victim of a former graduate student, Gang Lu, 28, who went on a rampage Friday at the University of Iowa before shooting himself. T. Anne Cleary, associate vice president of academic affairs, died yesterday. A prosecutor said Lu had written letters saying he planned to murder faculty members who did not nominate him for an academic honor. He had filed a complaint with Cleary.

 
 

Gunman outlined plans in letters

University of Iowa killings weren't random

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

November 3, 1991

IOWA CITY, Iowa - The gunman who killed five people and himself at the University of Iowa wrote letters to news organizations and acquaintances outlining his intentions, a prosecutor said Saturday.

Johnson County Attorney J. Patrick White said that Gang Lu, 28, had written five three-page letters saying he intended to kill members of the university physics and astronomy department who had bypassed his dissertation in favor of that of another Chinese graduate student.

 
 

Gunman in Iowa Wrote of Plans In Five Letters

By Michael Marriott - The New York Times

Sunday, November 3, 1991

Late Friday afternoon when the University of Iowa was slipping into what students here call "the weekend mode," a brilliant former graduate student in physics stood up during a scheduled meeting in his department and began, without a word, to methodically extinguish some of the brightest minds the campus has known.

In a melee of no more than 10 minutes, the student, Gang Lu swiftly moved through two university buildings, seeking out six specific targets and shooting each person at close range with a .38-caliber revolver before fatally turning the weapon on himself, the authorities said here today. Four were killed immediately, a fifth died today and the sixth victim is in critical condition.

Mr. Lu, who was also armed with a .22-caliber handgun that apparently was not used in the shootings, believed he had been wronged by the university, investigators said. A prestigious academic award that carried a $1,000 prize was awarded to another physics student, Linhua Shan, who was one of those killed.

University officials said Mr. Lu believed his doctoral dissertation should have earned the prize. J. Patrick White, the Johnson County attorney, added, however, that Mr. Lu's "perceived grievances" were more wide ranging. He refused to elaborate. Letters Tell of Plans

The discovery of five of Mr. Lu's letters after the shootings has convinced investigators here that he had detailed plans to inflict deadly violence on a number of university employees, Mr. White said at a news conference at the university today.

Joined by the University of Iowa's president, Hunter R. Rawlings 3d, and other university officials, Mr. White today painted a portrait of a darkly disturbed man who drove himself to success and to destruction.

Despite the perception of Mr. Lu among those who knew him as an outstanding scholar in theoretical space physics, Mr. White indicated that there was a sinister edge to Mr. Lu's character well before the shootings.

In the letters, four written in English and intended to be sent to news organizations, and one written in Chinese and intended for his native Beijing, Mr. Lu reportedly named his victims, said William Fuhrmeister, the university's public safety director. None of the letters were ever mailed, the authorities said. Mr. Fuhrmeister, the university's public safety director, said Mr. Lu had left instructions with acquaintances to mail the letters. The letters were apparently turned over to the authorities after the shootings.

In the letters, other targets besides the six shooting victims were also named Mr. White said, but he and other officials refused to disclose thier identities. Mr. Fuhrmeister said the letter in Chinese had not yet been translated. Students Are Horrified

The four men who were killed outright, all members of the department of physics and astronomy, died shortly after they were shot in the head, investigators said. They were Christoph K. Goertz, 47, professor of physics and astronomy; Dwight R. Nicholson, 44, professor and chairman of the department; Robert Alan Smith, associate professor of physics and astronomy, and and Mr. Shan, a research investigator in physics and astronomy who came to the university in 1989.

The fifth victim, T. Anne Cleary, 56, associate vice president of academic affairs, died of her wounds early this afternoon, a spokeswoman for the University's hospital, here said.

The sixth victim, Miya Rodolfo-Sioson, 23, a receptionist in Ms. Cleary's office, is critical condition, the hospital spokeswoman said. There was no indication if Ms. Rodolfo-Sioson was an intended target, said Mr. White. Students who were drawn from their classrooms by the shooting described the scene as shocking and horrifying. Students said both Van Allen Hall, which houses the Physics Department, and Jessup Hall, the administration building where two people were shot and Mr. Lu took his own life, were filled with blood and confusion.

Today Van Allen Hall named for James Van Allen, a professor at the university who discovered in 1958 the earth's radiation belts since named for him, stood silent and dark. A yellow police tape sealed off the building's many double-doored entrances.

Dr. Van Allen a professor emeritus of physics and astronomy, was in the building when the shooting began at 3:42 P.M. "I didn't hear anything," he said. "I was up on the seventh floor doing some work. At about 3:45 P.M. a young colleague of mine dashed into the office and said, 'I recommend you don't open the door until I hear it's O.K.' "

President Rawlings called the shootings a "terrible, terrible tragedy" when he returned to campus from Ohio after he learned of the sudden violence in this ordinary peaceful college town of 50,000 people.

Classes will be canceled Monday as investigations continue into the shootings, said Ann Rhodes, vice president of university affairs.

University officials could not clearly define Mr. Lu's capacity at the university at the time of the shootings. Mr. Lu who has been a slightly built fixture of scholarship in the corridors and laboratories of the hall was reportedly working in his laboratories.

Ms. Rhodes said Mr. Lu received his doctorate degree from the university in May of this year.

"He was staying on to do some work in the laboratory while looking for employment," she said. She added that she was unable to say whether Mr. Lu was on the university's payroll.

Mr. Lu, like the slain Mr. Shan, was a native of the People's Republic of China, and both had excelled in the study of physics, said Jack Fix, the associate chairman for astronomy.

"He was extremely bright and capable," Dr. Fix said of Mr. Lu. Later he added, that the murders represented a "great professional loss in addition to a great personal loss."

Shortly after university officials completed their press conference a number of Chinese students had their own. "Lu was kind of isolated. Don't like to communicate with other students," said Tao An. "It was his personality."

 
 

Letters give motive for Iowa shootings

Student who killed 5 was bypassed for honors so he targeted faculty

The Beacon Journal

November 3, 1991

The student who killed five people at the University of Iowa before turning a gun on himself wrote letters saying he planned to murder faculty members who didn't nominate him for an academic honor, a prosecutor said Saturday.

`His state of mind was that of a premeditated, coldblooded murderer,' Johnson County Attorney J. Patrick White said of Gang Lu, a former graduate student from China.

 
 

'Loner' announced his plot to murder six on Iowa campus

The Pittsburgh Press

November 3, 1991

The gunman who shot six University of Iowa employees, four fatally, before killing himself wrote letters to news organizations and acquaintances outlining his intentions, a prosecutor said.

Johnson County Attorney J. Patrick White said at a news conference yesterday that Gang Lu, 28, wrote five three-page letters saying he intended to kill members of the university physics and astronomy department who bypassed his dissertation in favor of another Chinese graduate student.

 
 

Iowa Gunman Was Torn by Academic Challenge

By Michael Marriott - The New York Times

November 4, 1991

To many of the 28,000 students who attend the University of Iowa, the Department of Physics and Astronomy seemed as if it existed in a universe all its own.

For six years, Gang Lu, one of the department's most gifted graduate students, knew that universe well as he explored the mind-bending complexities of space plasma theory, his specialty. It is a stream of science so narrow, experts say, that only about 300 people in the world are conducting research in the field.

But acquaintances of Mr. Lu say the 28-year-old native of Beijing reveled in a challenge -- as long as he triumphed.

And while many people knew him to be temperamental, angered by what he saw as unfair treatment by some faculty members and administrators, nobody was prepared for the rampage of murder and suicide that he unleashed on Friday.

"He had a very bad temper and saw himself as No. 1," said Xuming Chi, a doctoral candidate who was a former roommate of Mr. Lu. "He had a psychological problem with being challenged."

Mr. Lu was feeling especially pressured in recent months, acquaintances said. He had continued to visit the department's offices and laboratories in Van Allen Hall even after he received his doctoral degree in May, said Mr. Chi and others who knew Mr. Lu. Renowned Program

The department's doctoral program is nationally recognized as highly competitive, one that can create great stress, students and professors say. That stress is compounded by a shrinking market in which a doctoral degree does not always translate into a job befitting the education.

Still, Mr. Lu "seems to have obviously felt pressures that are abnormal," said John Fix, the associate chairman for astronomy, who was once a faculty adviser to Mr. Lu.

Mr. Lu has also been described by some who knew him as a driven yet gentle person. Whatever went wrong was internal, Dr. Fix said.

Mr. Lu had impressed professors with a computer calculation of the properties of ionized gases. His work with these substances, called plasmas by scientists, was the subject of the doctoral dissertation he completed last spring, university officials said.

It was the reception his dissertation received, less enthusiastic than Mr. Lu thought it deserved, that apparently touched off his rampage on Friday, said investigators who discovered letters in which Mr. Lu had outlined his grievances and his plans to exact deadly revenge.

"He had a personal belief that guns were an important means to an individual to redress grievances," said J. Patrick White, the Johnson County Attorney. Carried Two Guns

When Mr. Lu was found, dying from a self-inflicted gunshot, the .38-caliber revolver used in the killings was found on him as well as a loaded .22-caliber handgun that had not been used, Mr. White said.

In the four neatly typed three-page letters that Mr. Lu intended to be sent to news organizations, all but one of the victims were named. Others named in the letters included the university's president, Hunter R. Rawlings 3d.

"It's specuative as to whether these other names can be fairly described as targets," Mr. White said.

Investigators said they also had a package of Mr. Lu's possessions and a brief letter written in Chinese that he was seen mailing ib Friday a little more than an hour before the shootings started at 3:42 P.M.

How Mr. Lu acquired his weapons was partly explained today by Sheriff Robert Carpenter of Johnson County.

Records indicate that Mr. Lu applied for a permit to buy a firearm, a requirement in Iowa, on May 21. Three days later he was granted the permit after producing documents, including his visa and Chinese passport. Frightening Tantrums

He bought the .38-caliber snub-nose revolver at a sporting shop called Fin and Feather, Sheriff Carpenter said. While Mr. Lu legally owned the weapons, he did not have a permit to carry them, the sheriff added.

Mr. Lu, who acquaintances said frightened some people with abusive tantrums, was angry at the university's failure to award him its Spriesterbach Dissertation Prize, which carried a $2,500 prize and high prestige. He wrote several letters to university officials appealing the decision to award the prize to Linhua Shan, another promising graduate student from a small town in China.

Four years ago, Mr. Shan, 27, and Mr. Lu shared a modest apartment near the university. Mr. Chi, 35, who also lived in the apartment, said today that he warned Mr. Shan to move out because of Mr. Lu's temperament.

"I warned him," Mr. Chi said Saturday. "When I heard what happened at Van Allen Hall and somebody told me that he was Chinese, I guessed: Gang Lu." A Second Shot

Mr. Lu killed three physics professors who were on his dissertation committee, including the chairman of the department. At one point he left the seminar room in Van Allen Hall, then returned and shot one of the victims a second time, Mr. White said.

Crossing a campus dusted with snow Mr. Lu walked several blocks to Jessup Hall, the administration building.

At Jessup Hall, he asked for T. Anne Cleary, the associate vice president of academic affairs, whom he shot. He then wounded Ms. Cleary's 23-year-old receptionist before going upstairs and shooting himself.

The Van Allen Hall victims were killed outright. Dr. Cleary died at University Hospitals Saturday. Miya Sonya Rodolpho-Sioson, the receptionist, who is a honor student at the university, is in critical condition.

 
 

Gunman returned to kill prof, witness says

The Indianapolis Star

November 4, 1991

Iowa City, Iowa _ A former student who went on a shooting rampage at the University of Iowa left a professor injured in a meeting room but returned a few minutes later and killed him, a witness said Sunday.

Paul Hansen, a research scientist in the physics and astronomy department, said professors were 10 to 15 minutes into their weekly meeting Friday when Gang Lu stood up and shot three people.

 
 

Student bought gun in may

The Cincinnati Post

November 4, 1991

When Gang Lu's doctoral dissertation wasn't chosen by a University of Iowa committee for an academic honor, he filed a complaint - and bought a .38- caliber revolver. He took the gun to a weekly meeting of the physics and astronomy department Friday, where he began a rampage in which he killed five people and himself. After being denied the honor in May, Lu filed a complaint about the nomination process. Lu, 28, was issued a permit to buy a handgun on May 24.

 
 

Gang Lu

It was November 1, 1991, at around 3.40 pm when Gang Lu made his mark. He purposefully walked up to a group of professors and students at the University of Iowa and proceeded to kill four of them.

Before they victims even had time to understand what was going on the gunman was on the run. He headed toward the main administration building of the campus where he shot and injured the assistant vice president and her assistant. One of these woman died the next day in hospital.

When campus police finally arrived on the scene of the shootings they found the Gang Lu, the gunman, dead. He had put a bullet into his own head. Next to his body was the murder weapon, and inside a jacket pocket was another gun, a .22 pistol, that had not been fired.

When police looked into the killers background they discovered an almost brilliant student. Gang Lu had come to the school from China. He was apparently quiet amazing when it came to theoretical space physics, but it was because of this subject that he had acted out with such violence against his fellow students and professors.

Gang Lu had recently been passed over for a cash prize of $1000, and when we look at the victims and their relation to the awarding of this prize we see that Gang Lu was very methodical in his targeting of his victims, which makes this case particularly interesting.

The first victims was the chairman of the Physics and Astronomy Department at the University. The second was a professor at the same Department. Th third was a researcher at the same department, and the forth was a fellow Chinese immigrant, Linhua Shan. It was Shan who had won the $1000 that Gang Lu believed should have gone to him. The others where all involved in the judging of this prize.

When police Gang Lu personal effects they found a heap of letters he had written. All were addressed to various news agencies, both in English and Chinese, and told of his prior planning of the massacre, and also contained the names of others he was hoping to add to his ‘kill list’. Unfortunately for Gang Lu he could only erase five of these people before taking his own life.

 
 

Miya Rodolfo-Sioson, 1968-2008

By Ruthanne Shpiner - BerkeleyDailyPlanet.com

Wednesday December 10, 2008

Miya Rodolfo-Sioson, long-time advocate for disability rights, died at 10:45 a.m. December 3, at Highland Hospital, with her brother Renato at her side. Miya was being treated for inflammatory breast cancer. She was 40 years old.

In November 1991 Miya was about to graduate with high honors from the Global Studies program of the University of Iowa. She worked as a temp for the university’s Grievance Officer in the Academic Affairs Office.

Gang Lu, a new Ph.D., un-happy because he was denied a major dissertation prize, en-tered the office on November 1 and shot the Grievance Officer and Miya. She was the only person not on his hit list, and the last of the six people he shot before turning the gun on himself.

She was the sole survivor of the shooting, living for more than 17 years afterward. As a result of her injuries, she became a quadriplegic.

In 1996 she and Renato joined their mother Sonya in Berkeley. There she was well-known and admired as an active and successful champion for people with disabilities and a fighter against injustice. She sat on the Berkeley Commission on Disability from 1998 to 2006, serving as chair for part of that period.

In 2002 she was hired by the nonprofit organization Swift USA. She was the program coordinator for foreign ex-change high school students, matching them with local host families and organizing tours, until the cancer diagnosed in May 2007 rendered her unable to perform her duties.

Miya was noted for her humility, compassion, wry humor, gentle disposition and warm personality. She avoided dwelling on the circumstances that resulted in her disability, focusing instead on the present and moving forward.

She will long be remembered in Berkeley by those who benefited from her work as well as her family and many friends. Kelley Kolberg, Miya’s morning attendant, said of her, “My job with Miya was one of the best I’ve ever had. I’ve never known a more remarkable person, not to mention great friend.”

A documentary about Miya will come out in early 2009.
 

Miya Rodolfo-Sioson, in a photograph taken in 1993 or 1994 in a classroom at the University of Iowa, where she was majoring in Spanish.

 
 


Gang Lu

 

Gang Lu shot five people and himself at the University of Iowa in 1991,
including Miya Sonya Rodolfo-Sioson

 

 

 
 
 
 
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