According to reports, ASU sophomore Carol Kestenbaum, 20, and her good friend Nicole Schiffman, a 20-year-old sophomore at Maryland, were killed by Tempe resident Joshua Mendel, 22, after returning from a birthday party for Kestenbaum early yesterday morning. Schiffman, who grew up with Kestenbaum in Bellmore, N.Y., had flown in for the occasion.
Community Rallies Together in Wake of Tragedy
Students at Arizona State University and the University of Maryland woke to tragic news Monday morning: Two of their own had been gunned down in what Tempe, Ariz. police are calling a murder-suicide.
According to reports, ASU sophomore Carol Kestenbaum, 20, and her good friend Nicole Schiffman, a 20-year-old sophomore at Maryland, were killed by Tempe resident Joshua Mendel, 22, after returning from a birthday party for Kestenbaum early yesterday morning. Schiffman, who grew up with Kestenbaum in Bellmore, N.Y., had flown in for the occasion.
Mendel, an acquaintance of Kestenbaum’s, had waited for the pair at Kestenbaum’s apartment before shooting Kestenbaum, according to police. He then chased down Schiffman and killed her; Mendel’s body was found a short distance away, felled by a self-inflicted gunshot.
Authorities speculate that Mendel was angry with Kestenbaum for objecting to his dating another friend of hers.
“I watch these on the news and it’s always other people’s children,” Schiffman’s father, Ronald, told Newsday. “To do this because of jealousy? If he was going to kill himself, then why did he have to kill two other people first?”
At ASU, students struggled to come to grips with the news that two promising lives were so viciously cut short.
“We’re shocked to see someone like Carol die,” Honora Swanson Bober, 19, told The Arizona Republic. “She had it all. Everyone wanted to be her friend.”
In an e-mail sent to students, Rabbi Shmuel Tiechtel, director of Chabad at ASU, mourned the loss of Kestenbaum and Schiffman, whom he called “two wonderful Jewish college students.”
“It pains the heart immensely,” he wrote. “There are no words.”
While he offered his support to any students who wanted to talk, Tiechtel also established a campaign designed to honor the girls’ memories through the dedication of a good deed.
“Even if you have not known Carol or Nicole personally, it is a special mitzvah and merit for their souls to do a positive deed in their memory,” he wrote.
A dedication page can be found on the campus Chabad House’s Web site, www.jewishasu.com.
CN
Horrible tragedy. We need Moshiach now. Was the killer Jewish too (Hashem help us)? His name sounds like a Jewish name, but it’s hard to believe a Jew would do something like this; and in today’s times it can be hard to guess who’s Jewish without knowing the mother’s maiden name.
Anonymous
TO: CN
He was not Jewish.
-Techie
a girl
baruch hashem he wasnt! hamokem yenachem…