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Obituary: Emil Sanielevici -- Popular and brilliant student
Saturday, March 04, 2000 By Cindi Lash, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
A memorial service for Emil Sanielevici will be held at 3 p.m. Monday in Heinz Memorial Chapel, Oakland.
Mr. Sanielevici, 20, of Greenfield, was the last of five people to be shot Wednesday and the third to die after a gunman's shooting spree in Wilkinsburg. He suffered head and brain injuries and died Thursday night at UPMC Presbyterian.
Mr. Sanielevici was shot while sitting in his red Honda Civic in the drive-through lane of the Wilkinsburg McDonald's restaurant. Police said the gunman, identified as Ronald Taylor, 39, of Wilkinsburg, walked up to Mr. Sanielevici's car and fired at point-blank range.
A junior physics major at the University of Pittsburgh, Mr. Sanielevici lived with his father, Sergiu, and his grandmother, Elizabeth Sanielevici.
He was employed as a consultant at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center in Oakland, where his father is the assistant director of scientific applications.
A native of Romania, Mr. Sanielevici emigrated with his physicist parents and older brother to Canada when he was 1. The family left Romania to escape the repressive regime of the country's late dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu.
Mr. Sanielevici moved to Pittsburgh with his father and grandmother in 1995.
Friends and co-workers described him as a popular, brilliant student who was looking forward to attending graduate school and to emulating the academic and professional success of his parents.
He was a 1997 graduate of Allderdice High School in Squirrel Hill, where he had been an honor student. He also was an avid follower of the stock market and was known to investors around the world as the "Grand Elf," the name he used on Internet message boards to tout Osicom Technologies, his favorite networking stock.
In addition to his father and grandmother, Mr. Sanielevici is survived by his mother, Michaela Sanielevici of Montreal; a brother, Alex Sanielevici of Detroit; and his maternal grandfather, Valentin Niculescu of Bucharest, Romania.
Mr. Sanielevici's organs were donated and his remains cremated, his brother said.
There will be no visitation, but a private service will be scheduled for family and friends.
Arrangements are by John A. Freyvogel Funeral Home, 4900 Centre Ave., Shadyside.
Plans are under way to establish a scholarship fund in his name at the University of Pittsburgh.
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