Posted on 04/05/2009 9:42:13 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Omri Yigal rode to the hospital Saturday afternoon with his wife's passport and a photo taken at one of their many happy moments.
He hoped the photograph would help the authorities identify her, but he had been told the victims were disfigured by the large-caliber bullets.
"They call it 'unrecognizable,' the bodies are 'unrecognizable,'" Yigal said. "That's what they were telling me."
He had not yet even received formal notification that Dolores Yigal was among those who died in the massacre at the American Civic Center. He had also been warned not to take this as a reason to hope.
"The police have given me a grim report, very grim," he said. "They said I should prepare myself. There is little chance she is alive. They describe the scene as gruesome and there are a lot of Asian women who fit my wife's description and lost their life."
He had last seen his wife on Friday morning. She had, as always, risen before the sun to take a shower and wash her hair. She then padded down to the kitchen to make breakfast.
"We always have oatmeal, raisin," he said.
When she returned upstairs, he was still in bed, tired from commuting to New York City in pursuit of a master's degree in Judaic Studies.
"She came into the bedroom and said, 'I am going to class now,'" he recalled. "After she got dressed, I noted she was wearing jeans and a gold or some kind of tan shirt."
He did not imagine this could be the last time he would see her and, however hard he might strain to remember, his memory of exactly what she was wearing would remain imprecise.
"I don't know everything because I was a little sleepy," he said.
He does have a crystalline memory of a farewell that was only to have been for a few hours.
"She always kisses me before she goes," he now said.
She was out the door at her usual time, a half-hour before the 9 a.m. Level 2 English class begins, even though the American Civic Center is only a quick walk away.
"She will leave here no later than 8:30 to get to her class," he said. "She wants to get a good seat, she says."
Her teacher had told him via e-mails that she was blossoming in class.
"Her English was already respectable when she started and she wanted it to be even better," he said. "She's a perfectionist and I admire that."
The oatmeal was waiting for him when he came downstairs. He then headed downtown to attend to some errands. He was by an elevator when he heard a man on a cell phone say something about a shooting.
"Then he said, '...at the American Civic Center,'" Yigal recalled.
The cops waited outside for 90 minutes. The receptionist was shot and hiding under the desk feeding info to the cops on the phone. The womn lay their dying while the cops waited outside. She is in critical condition.
I mean why not lob tear gas in the building or do anything.
Incredibly sad.
May God be with Mr. Yigal, and all the survivors of this horrible tragedy.
Such a sad and senseless tragedy.
These guys that get laid off, or whose wife leaves them or whatever news makes them go off the deep end and want to end their life - should do just that, END THEIR OWN LIFE.
Not take a bunch of innocents with them before they do it. Evil Cowards.
So, not a word of reproach from our fearless leader, huh? All is going along, according to plan...chaos! What is next?
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