Indiana Shooting Victim Mourned

U.S. Atty. Gen. Janet Reno and about 2,000 family, friends and community members gathered Tuesday to pay tribute to a Korean college student who was gunned down during a white supremacist’s shooting outburst over the Fourth of July weekend.

Won-Joon Yoon, 26, was one of two people slain in the shootings. Authorities believe the Indiana University undergraduate was killed July 4 by Benjamin Smith, a former student who committed suicide later that day.

Smith, 21, was a former member of the World Church of the Creator, a white supremacist group based in East Peoria, Ill. Authorities said he also killed a former basketball coach outside Chicago and wounded nine other people--all of them black, Jewish or Asian.

“Haters are cowards,” Reno said. “When confronted, they usually back down. And if they don’t back down, you must continue to confront them.”

Yoon, the only son among four siblings, came to Bloomington after earning a master’s degree in economics. His goal was to earn a doctorate and become a teacher.