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Shenouda Adly was shot in the chest at age 16 by Egyptian military forces
On March 8, sixteen-year-old Shenouda Adly heard gunfire on the road approaching his neighborhood in the Mokattam Hills of Cairo. When he asked what it was, Shenouda’s friends told him that the revolution had reached their doorstep. In actuality, however, a group of young Coptic men were blocking the road in protest to show their solidarity with other Coptic Christians across Cairo who were demonstrating over a church that had been burnt down by a Muslim mob days earlier. Listening to the crackle of gunshots from his home, Shenouda could not resist the urge to see the protest for himself. At 4:00 pm, he went to join his friends on the street.
When Shenouda arrived at the scene, his father was already there and told him to return to the house immediately. Eyewitnesses said that the protestors had been confronted by a Muslim mob, and that both sides were throwing stones at each other. When the military arrived to disperse the protestors, they first shot into the air and then opened fire into the Coptic crowd. This was no place for a sixteen-year-old boy.
Shenouda’s father returned home soon after, but could not find his son. “Where’s my son? Where’s my son?” the father shouted. Shenouda’s friend told the father that he had found him in the hospital. When Shenouda’s family arrived to see him, they learned that he had been shot through the chest and was already dead. “It was the army who killed him,” Shenouda’s uncle, who was at the scene, told ICC. “They shot at many Christian people.”
ICC visited Shenouda’s mother, sister, and uncle, as well as eight other families who lost loved ones, to offer financial assistance and to help them begin a sustainable business. Shenouda’s family lives in an area of Cairo known as a ‘garbage community.’ The family’s lone source of income comes from collecting and recycling Cairo’s rubbish. Please pray for Shenouda’s mother and sister (pictured below) as well as the eight other families who lost loved ones in this tragic attack.
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Shenouda took this photo of himself with his cell phone two hours before his death.
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Shenouda's sister & mother
