ALBERTAN DIED IN NICE
Student a victim of truck attack
He taught ballroom dance, he golfed, represented his classmates on student council and ran with a national championship winning cross-country team.
After hearing confirmation vivacious 22-year-old MacEwan University student Mykhaylo (Misha) Bazelevskyy died when an attacker drove into a Bastille Day crowd in Nice, France, his friends said Wednesday they’re heartbroken, angry and in disbelief.
“It saddens me that this is how the world gets to know Misha,” friend Brittany Pitruniak said.
MacEwan University president David Atkinson issued a statement Wednesday confirming the commerce student was one of more than 80 people killed July 14 in the French city when Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel’s truck barrelled into a crowd.
Once Bazelevskyy’s death was confirmed, friends began to share more details of the deadly night.
University of California student Vlad Kostiuk posted that he was with a group of eight friends walking back toward the old city along the Promenade des Anglais after the fireworks.
They heard the truck coming and jumped off a pedestrian walkway onto the beach. Bazelevskyy died from the fall, said Kostiuk, who sustained a concussion when he fell. His information about what happened came from friends who filled him in later. He posted the update on VKontakte, a Russian social media site similar to Facebook.
The university said it received confirmation of Bazelevskyy’s death from French officials and his family late Tuesday.
“Few, if any of us, can comprehend the senselessness of what occurred in Nice,” Atkinson said in the statement. “There is no greater loss to a university than a student who has so much life and promise ahead of him.”
Bazelevskyy is a Ukrainian citizen with permanent resident status in Canada.
He was studying at MacEwan’s School of Business and visiting France on an exchange program with four other local students and a faculty member. The others weren’t hurt.
Bazelevskyy was known on the MacEwan campus as the cheerful friend who would always stop to chat, said Pitruniak, a friend and student association colleague.
She recalled the first year both were elected as councillors, laughing and goofing around when they were partners on a scavenger hunt during a retreat at Sylvan Lake.
“He had this joy and this spunk for life. And everyone knew it.”
Bazelevskyy’s parents live in Ukraine, and his brother and sister-in-law live in Edmonton.
The university said it would be offering to assist Bazelevskyy’s family in any way it can.