Egyptian Virginia Tech victim gave his life to save a fellow student

CAIRO, Egypt: Graduate student Waleed Mohammed Shaalan was planning on bringing his Egyptian family back to Virginia Tech but a rampaging gunman prevented that. The young man lost his life but was credited with acting to save a fellow student. [...]

Shaalan, 32, had been at Virginia Tech since August studying for a Ph.D. in civil engineering. He was ambitious, saying he wanted to follow in the footsteps of Ahmed Zewail, an Egyptian who won the Nobel prize for chemistry in 1999, said his father, Mohammed Shaalan, 65.

Randy Dymond, a civil engineering professor, said Shaalan was credited with distracting gunman Cho Seung-Hui to save the life of a fellow student.

Dymond, who attended a service for Shaalan Thursday, said the Egyptian was in the first classroom Cho attacked and was badly wounded. Cho returned to the room twice to search for signs of life.

During one of those incidents, a second student who was uninjured, was playing dead. When Shaalan noticed Cho making a move to shoot the student, the Egyptian made a "protective movement to basically decoy the killer into thinking it was him making any kind of sound instead of the survivor," Dymond said.

Dymond declined to give the name of the student who survived, but said the student wanted him to tell the story "so that the family of Waleed understands the sacrifice." [...]