Famous Last Words

Seen in comments at Tam's:
Murdered State Department official Sean Smith was influential online gamer | The Lookout - Yahoo! News

Today, the U.S. is recoiling* from the tragic news that Sean Smith, a State Department official, was one of four individuals killed in a rocket attack in Libya. The U.S. ambassador to Libya was also among those who died.

Smith, a foreign service information management officer, had a sphere of influence that extended far beyond the realm of real-world diplomacy: He was also a respected and hugely influential figure in the world of online gaming.

For much of the past decade, Smith was an avid player of Eve Online, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). The game has more than 400,000 players, who take on roles as warriors, strategists and even diplomats in a science-fiction setting.

Alex Gianturco, aka "The Mittani," one of Smith's Eve Online colleagues, has written a moving tribute to his fallen friend, who went by the online moniker "Vile Rat."

 OK, I confess, when I first saw that, I mis-read his handle as "Ville Rat", GI slang in Korea for a guy who goes out, um, partying every night...

The article posts one of his last messages:

(12:54:09 PM) vile_rat: assuming we don't die tonight. We saw one of our 'police' that guard the compound taking pictures

I think we can take it as established that the attack(s) was (were) coordinated and planned.

His last message:

"In Baghdad the same kind of thing happened - incoming sirens, he'd vanish, we'd freak out and he'd come back ok after a bit. This time he said ... 'GUNFIRE' and then disconnected and never returned...."

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*Recoiling, Hell, I'm reloading...