Yale mourns Annie Le at candlelight vigil
Yale University students and faculty participate in a candlelight vigil for Annie Le in New Haven, Conn. on Monday Sept. 14, 2009. Credit: AP
NEW HAVEN - As investigators hunted for her killer, hundreds of Yale University students, faculty and staff came together Monday night in a somber candlelight vigil to mourn a graduate student whose violent death has shaken the campus community.
PHOTOS: Click here to see the latest photos from the investigation, and photos of Annie Le
"As scholars, as learners, as seekers and as human souls with empathy and compassion, we find it incomprehensible that life can be so unjust," said Yale president Richard Levin of the death of Annie Le, 24, who was killed just days before her wedding to a Huntington man. Her body was found stuffed inside a wall in a medical lab building on Sunday, several days after she went missing.
Le's roommate, Natalie Powers, spoke haltingly of the young woman she shared an apartment with for two years.
"She was as good a person as you'd ever hope to meet," Powers said. "She was tenacious and had a sense of humor that was never very far away."
The vigil in the Cross Campus quad lasted only 20 minutes, but mourners lingered for more than a half-hour after it ended. At one point, the crowd hummed "Amazing Grace."
Moments later, a student sitting alone on a bench began playing the song on a violin. When she was finished, she sat silently, head bowed, before quickly packing up her instrument, slinging it over her shoulder and walking away.
"I wanted to be here and see this," said Tara Mayeau, a graduate student in geophysics. "I'm not from the medical school and I don't know her, but I wanted to be here and see this.
Le, from California, went missing Tuesday, leaving her purse, cell phone, money and credit cards in her office. Her body was found in the basement of a nearby lab building on the day she was set to marry Jonathan Widawsky of Huntington at the North Ritz Club in Syosset.
"What happened to Annie has served as a wake-up call for all of us," said Jourdan Urbach, 17, a Yale freshman from Roslyn, a neuroscience major who is interning on a research project at the medical school twice a week.
"It's a reminder, but it's not a game-changer," he said. "We live in an urban area where bad things sometimes happen."
Monday afternoon, students and faculty packed the auditorium at Sterling Hall of Medicine for a briefing on security in which Levin sought to reassure them that the basement area of the building where Le's body was found is safe, according to the Hartford Courant.
"No amount of hardware can overcome the darkness of the human soul," Levin said, according to the Courant. "Some person did something terrible."
PHOTOS: Click here to see the latest photos from the investigation, and photos of Annie Le
COMPLETE COVERAGE: Click here to read more stories on Annie Le
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