Egypt Erupts After Teen Thrown From Roof, Killed

Hamada Badr, 17, and three friends ran on Friday to the top of a six-story apartment building in Alexandria, Egypt, hoping for a better look at the chaos below, where Muslim Brotherhood supporters and opponents were clashing violently. Reports differ—some say the teens threw rocks at the Brotherhood supporters, but the teens insist they did not—but the end result was that a few Islamists chased them down and threw three of them off the roof. Two fell just 20 feet and survived, but Hamada fell all the way to the ground and was killed. His death, for which one person has been arrested, has sparked outrage, the Los Angeles Times reports.

"It was shocking," says one political activist. "It makes you think the Brotherhood has gone crazy since [Mohamed] Morsi's removal and doesn't know what it's doing." Even some Morsi supporters aren't sure the Brotherhood can redeem itself after this incident, which was captured and widely publicized via cellphone video (Hamada himself is not shown falling). "Down with the murderers of children!" shouted anti-Morsi demonstrators yesterday. Friends remember Hamada as a polite high school student, and the Times notes that climbing onto the roof might have been "the first political act of his life." Some of the Brotherhood demonstrators, the paper notes, thought he was a sniper, and called for him to come down. Then he and his friends were surrounded, rocks were thrown at them, and Hamada was beaten before falling to his death. (More Egypt stories.)