Saudi Gazette report

AHSA — The family of a 22-year-old Saudi scholarship student who was killed by two robbers in California does not want US authorities to carry out an autopsy and demanded his body be flown quickly back to the Kingdom so he can be buried in Al-Hazm graveyard, Hofuf.



Mansour Al-Yami’s father Samaan told a local daily on Tuesday though his son was shot by robbers a few days ago and died later in a hospital, he was not able to get a visit visa to America in time to be with him.



“I tried to obtain a visa to be with my son on his death bed but I could not,” the father said, appealing to the Education Ministry to investigate the incident and find out what had happened to his son.



Al-Yami was shot in the liver and the lungs on Jan. 19, with bullet fragments landing near his spine.



He was taken to the University Hospital in Irvine, where he died 12 days later on Jan. 31.



Police are looking for two people of Latino appearance.



The father said he received telephone calls from the Saudi ambassador to Washington and the cultural attaché conveying their condolences over the death of his son and promising to follow up the investigations until the murderers were caught.



He said the ambassador and the cultural attaché also pledged to complete all the necessary procedures until the body is flown to the Kingdom.



Al-Yami had been in America for a year and a half and was studying engineering at the University of California in Irvine.



He was traveling by car from Irvine to Santa Ana to visit friends when he was stopped by two unknown gunmen who asked him for his money and other valuables.



Al-Yami told the robbers he had no money and gave them his mobile phone but when he tried to flee in his car they shot him.



He was taken to the hospital where he was confined.



The hospital asked to transfer him to an advanced rehabilitation center in San Dimas, Colorado, to complete his treatment.



The center had agreed to receive and treat him.



According to his brother Auwaidah, who is studying at the same university, the cost of airlifting him to Colorado was $20,000, which the family did not have. “Because of this my brother died in the prime of his youth,” he said.