Hunt Underway After Deadly Brown Shooting & Remembering the Reiners
Authorities pursue new leads as safety concerns persist on campus. Plus: Loss and heroism at Bondi Beach. The Reiners' legacy of change. Dr. Samantha Boardman on processing grief. And more.
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This is a hard day to cover – or read – the news.
A mass shooting at a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney. A mass shooting at Brown University. The murder of two people I knew and admired, Rob and Michele Reiner, apparently at the hands of their own son.
I’m usually able to separate from the news to do the job. Today feels different. Our audience includes Brown students and their families. People who have attended celebrations like the Hanukkah gathering on the beach in Sydney. And I knew Rob and Michele Reiner — warm people who stood up for others, took risks for what they believed, and showed compassion, even when it cost them.
These things are hard to process. I asked my friend, the psychiatrist Dr. Samantha Boardman: How do we make sense of this kind of violence? What do we do to lift out of the distress? Her simple advice: Don’t try to do either. Instead, she advises us to focus on the living; take action to feel connected to your community; and, when you feel the need, allow for some distraction. She says it more artfully than I do. Watch our short conversation here.
You can find more of Dr. Boardman’s wisdom on her Substack, The Dose.
In today’s newsletter: What we know about the victims and survivors in Sydney and Providence, the latest on the investigations, and the Reiners’ legacy. Plus a few other stories.
It’s a lot. If you need a break – give yourself permission to turn away from the news.
Here Are Your Headlines
Hunt is On: Authorities released new videos and photos of a man they say is a person of interest in the shooting at Brown University. An FBI wanted poster describes him as 5’8” with a stocky build and still armed and dangerous; in the images he’s wearing a face mask and a beanie pulled down low. They are offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to his capture. A 24-year-old person of interest was detained on Sunday in connection with the attack, but later that day he was released. According to a witness, a masked man with a rifle burst into a classroom where students were preparing for an economics exam and opened fire. Two students were killed and nine injured, of whom one remains in critical condition. Authorities say the gunman targeted Brown but they don’t know whether he targeted these students in particular, nor have they identified a motive.
Chasing Leads: On Monday officers went door to door through Providence searching for more footage that might help them track down the suspect. I’ve spoken with several students who have shared their concern that officials continue to say the campus is safe despite the fact that the suspect still hasn’t been captured. If you are a parent unsure how to address this violence with your school-age kids, please watch the conversation with Dr. Samantha Boardman at the top of this newsletter. She has some helpful advice.
Lives Lost: One of the students killed was 18-year-old Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, described by his sister as a “gentle” boy who chose to study at Brown because its financial aid placed the lowest burden on their parents. According to his friends, Umurzokov received specialized care for a medical condition as a child, and wanted to become a neurosurgeon to help kids like him. The other was 19-year-old sophomore Ella Cook, a talented pianist who served as vice president of Brown’s Republican Club. Cook’s hometown pastor remembered her as a “bright light” who was “incredibly grounded and generous.”
Deja Vu: For at least two Brown students, this wasn’t even the first school shooting they’d survived. Mia Tretta, a junior, was shot in the stomach in a 2019 shooting at her high school in California. She was 15. “No one should ever have to go through one shooting, she said, “let alone two.” Sophomore Zoe Weissman, who survived the Parkland middle-school shooting, said the Brown shooting made her “feel like I’m 12 again.” “I’m really angry that this is happening to me all over again,” she said. “This isn’t a new phenomenon, and we’re going to get to a point where there’s [more] people like myself who survived two of these.” It makes one wonder: Will this generation, raised on routine school shootings, finally demand what their elders wouldn’t — real action on guns and mental health?
Horror Down Under: On Sunday evening, hundreds of people were gathering on Sydney’s iconic Bondi Beach. They weren’t just there for the beautiful views and gorgeous summer weather; the crowd was waiting for the start of “Chanukah by the Sea,” an annual event marking the first night of Hanukkah, the Jewish festival of light. Bondi Beach has been a center for Sydney’s Jewish community since the first refugees from the Holocaust arrived in Australia. But what should have been a joyous celebration turned into a nightmare when two men took positions on an elevated footbridge and opened fire on the crowd. “We were like sitting ducks,” one woman later said. “They just kept reloading,” a witness said. The attackers killed at least 16 people and injured dozens more in what quickly became Australia’s worst mass shooting in three decades — one that police say was “designed to target Sydney’s Jewish community” in what Prime Minister Anthony Albanese condemned as “an act of evil antisemitism.”
Lives Lost: As shots rang out, people fled, took shelter where they could; parents soothed young children and brave individuals shielded loved ones. Still, as of Monday, 16 people had died and dozens remain in the hospital, some in critical condition. The victims range from a 10-year-old girl named Matilda, whose aunt said was “bright, joyful, and spirited,” to a Holocaust survivor who reportedly died shielding his wife. Many of those killed were pillars of the local Jewish community, including multiple rabbis. You can read more about the victims here.
Seeking Answers: Authorities say the attackers were a 50-year-old father and his 24-year-old son. The elder man reportedly immigrated to Australia in 1998 and the younger was an Australian-born citizen. They are believed to have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State. The younger attacker was previously investigated over his ties to a local Islamic State terror cell, but authorities concluded “there was no indication of any ongoing threat … of him engaging in violence,” according to Prime Minister Albanese. “There’s no evidence that these people were part of a cell,” Albanese said, but they seem to have been motivated by “Islamic State ideology.” The 50-year-old was killed during the attack. The younger attacker was severely injured and hospitalized. Police found multiple guns and improvised explosive devices at the scene.
Hero: More people may have died if not for the heroic actions of Ahmed al Ahmed. The 43-year-old Syrian-born Australian citizen and father of two young daughters “saw the victims,” his father later said, and “was driven by his sentiment, conscience, and humanity” to act. Video footage shows an unarmed al Ahmed charging at one of the gunmen, seizing his weapon, and forcing him to back off. Al Ahmed was shot multiple times, and is recovering in hospital; a fundraiser for him has already gathered over $1 million.
Taking Action: Australia’s National Cabinet on Monday ordered officials to present options for stricter gun laws. According to police, the elder attacker was a licensed gun owner with six legally registered firearms. The incident was Australia’s worst mass shooting in almost three decades; in 1996, a lone gunman opened fire in Port Arthur, killing 35. The massacre prompted sweeping gun reforms that resulted in declining firearm deaths and helped the country go without a single mass shooting for decades.
Tragic End: Legendary director Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, were found dead in their LA home on Sunday by their daughter, Romy. The pair’s 32-year-old son, Nick, was arrested that night. The LAPD said on Monday he was “responsible for their deaths,” and he was booked for murder.
Troubled: Reiner and his son, Nick, had been open about the latter’s troubles. They actually made a movie about it, the 2015 drama Being Charlie, which documented Nick’s struggles with addiction. Nick was reportedly in rehab more than 17 times and had also experienced homelessness. He lived with his parents at the time of the killing.
In Memoriam: Rob Reiner, the son of a TV comedian, got his start as an actor. He won two Emmys for his work on the groundbreaking sitcom “All in the Family.” It was as a director that he is best known today. Few in history have managed a run of films as iconic as Reiner in the late ’80s and early ’90s: genre-defining mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap, The Sure Thing, coming-of-age Stand by Me, beloved classic Princess Bride, holiday rom-com When Harry Met Sally, sinister horror Misery, and tense drama A Few Good Men. As if that wasn’t enough, Reiner also helped produce some of America’s most iconic TV and cinema, from Seinfeld to the Shawshank Redemption. Reiner’s skill allowed him to jump between and push the bounds of different genres. He liked to say that many of his films verged on the autobiographical. They are filled with humor, yes, but also a unique and powerful tenderness and empathy. In an era that increasingly celebrates cruelty and cynicism, his films insisted that people are basically good. Little wonder, then, that millions around the world still hold them dear. One woman even told Reiner that she survived an avalanche by quoting The Princess Bride. (If you haven’t seen it, do yourself a favor and watch it this holiday.)
Film (and Life) Changing: Now, Reiner didn’t manage all that alone. He met Michele on the set of When Harry Met Sally. Later, he said that Harry and Sally weren’t originally meant to end up together because he “couldn’t figure out how to be with anybody” himself. But after meeting Michele he re-wrote the film to conclude with the now-iconic happy ending. The two married in 1989 and had three children together.
Beyond Hollywood: Rob and Michele’s legacy extends far beyond the silver screen. “Beneath all of the stories he produced,” former President Barack Obama noted, “was a deep belief in the goodness of people” — a belief that animated a lifetime of activism, for both of them. Rob and Michele Reiner cofounded the American Foundation for Equal Rights, which funded the legal fight for marriage equality and ultimately toppled California’s Proposition 8 — paving the way for the Supreme Court to legalize same-sex marriage nationwide. Together they helped establish a groundbreaking tobacco-tax-funded early childhood development program that gave hundreds of thousands of children access to preschool and prenatal care. The pair produced many documentaries, including one on Christian nationalism. Over the decades, they helped countless Democratic politicians win office and were fierce critics of Trump, who Rob warned was threatening “American democracy.” Trump greeted their deaths with even less grace than usual, alleging (without evidence) that Reiner and Michele were killed “due to the anger he caused others through his … TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME.” Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called Michele Rob’s “indispensable partner, intellectual resource, and loving wife” in “all of their endeavors.” Friends described them as an inseparable pair who worked side by side for 36 years to do what they believed would make the world safer and fairer. They will be missed and their legacy of change will endure.
Keep reading for information on… The bizarre left-wing terror plot the FBI claims to have foiled. 20 states sue over “devastating” new visa fee. Appeals court unanimously allows Trump administration to target Planned Parenthood. And a worrying revelation from the classified version of Trump’s national security strategy.
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