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By AP
Monday, March 19, 2012
The school employing an American
teacher gunned down in Yemen has denied accusations that he was proselytising
Christianity.
A text message that circulated by
mobile phone in Yemen said that ``holy warriors'' had killed ``a senior
missionary'' in the central city of Taiz, shortly after the teacher was shot
dead Sunday by two gunmen on a motorcycle.
It was impossible to confirm the
claim of responsibility.
Taiz security director Ali Al
Saidi said Monday that the investigation is still ongoing.
A statement from the International
Training Development Centre in Taiz identified the victim as
Joel Shrum, an American
development worker living in Yemen with his wife and two children since 2010.
The school denied that Shrum was
proselytizing, saying that he ``highly respected'' Islam. It said Muslims and
Christians work together on ``human development, skill transfer and community
development'' projects there and that religious and political debates are not
permitted.
The release said the school ``is
calling on the Yemeni people to rise up and rejects the hatred and violence in
their country.''
The (Lancaster) Intelligencer
Journal/Lancaster New Era (http://bit.ly/FPIqYv) identified Shrum, 30, as a
former resident of the central Pennsylvania town of Mount Joy.
Shrum's father told the newspaper
his son loved his job. ``He was just motivated by especially seeing people
coming out of poverty,'' James Shrum said.
Joel Shrum had last talked to his
family on Friday, discussing a planned vacation together this summer, the
newspaper reported.
Shrum was a standout football
player at Donegal High School, where former coach Gayne Deshler remembered him
as a team-first player. Deshler told the newspaper he worried about Shrum and
other family members who did church worker abroad, fearing the kind of violence
that took Shrum's life.
``They were the
kind of family you could see doing that because they were always more interested
in other people than themselves,'' he said.
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