By Matt Russell
Post-Bulletin, Rochester MN
Friday, Oct 03, 2008
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Mourn murder victim Family and friends mourn the death of 42-year-old Muhidin Yahye Mumin. From the left are Sheiknor Qassim, Abdulqader ''Nurani'' Abubakar, Mohamoud Hamud and Aisha Kassim. Michele Jokinen/Post-Bulletin |
Somewhere in our minds rests an image of the type of person who dies alone in a dark alley: homeless. A loner. Someone who made enemies more easily than friends.
But Muhidin Yahye Mumin was nothing like that, according to the many people mourning him.
"He didn't have any enemies," said Omar Hashim of Rochester.
Mumin, 42, who died after a beating in downtown Rochester early Wednesday morning, was known widely for the compassion he showed the elderly.
"He did a lot of caretaking for a lot of the Somali residents," said Patti Fritz, manager of Park Towers apartments in Rochester.
"He was my eyes," said Mohomed Qolof of Rochester, who is blind.
Mumin, who was known in Rochester by his Italian name, Angelo Storti Zeno, was the only child of a Somali mother and a businessman who exported bananas from Somalia to his native Italy.
He fled Somalia amid violence in 1990, living with relatives in Italy before settling with his wife and two children in Toronto. After a divorce in 2005, Mumin moved to Rochester, where his ex-wife's relatives welcomed him as family.
Police noted Mumin had no permanent address at the time of his death, but his ex-wife's family said he was far from being homeless, always having a place to stay either with them or with elderly Somalis while caring for them.
"He never needed to have a place for himself," said former sister-in-law Aisha Kassim of Rochester.
Mumin's former in-laws also claim he had no enemies, asserting that his beating death was the result of bias.
"They took his life because of nothing," said his former brother-in-law Sheiknor Qassim.
Source: Post-Bulletin, Oct 03, 2008