MOUNTAIN BROOK, Ala. (WBMA) — As investigators in Rhode Island continue their search for the gunman who opened fire inside a Brown University building last week, killing two students and injuring nine others, loved ones in Alabama are remembering one of the victims — 19-year-old Ella Cobbs Cook of Mountain Brook — as a quiet, radiant force whose life touched countless people.
Ella, a sophomore at Brown concentrating in French and Mathematics–Economics, was fatally shot on December 13 during final exams. The campus and surrounding Providence neighborhoods went into lockdown as police searched for a suspect, and the community has since been grieving the loss of a young woman whose obituary describes a life defined by faith, kindness, and love for others.
Born in Birmingham in 2006, Ella grew up in Mountain Brook with her parents, Anna Bishop Cook and Richard Poellnitz Cook, and her siblings Hooker and Mary Hamner. A graduate of Mountain Brook High School and a lifelong member of Cathedral Church of the Advent, Ella was known for her deep Christian faith — a faith her family says guided her every day…