as a postdoctoral researcher for the university of liege in belgium. in a statement, the foreign office has confirmed they re in contact with us authorities and are supporting matthew s family, who ve described him as a wise and joyful person. such a beautiful soul. i mean, we are graduate students. we don t have a tonne of money, or at least that we get paid, but we were trying. we were on a budget, but we were trying to stay in the safest neighbourhoods. and so brookhaven is one of the atlanta suburbs and is considered a safe area. and so this apartment was picked, and i me and katherine moved in in august last year, and we heard shots back in october, and we had to call the cops saying that we heard some gunshots. but again, there were justjust a few shots, didn t go past a couple of minutes, and then another time in november. and then we heard this time. but this time, the unusual part was it
the final photo of matthew willson taken on the second day of a visit to his girlfriend katherine sheppard in atlanta, just hours before his life was taken away. at around 2am last sunday, the couple awoke in this bed to gunshots being fired nearby. in what police are calling a random and senseless act, one of the bullets penetrated the exterior wall of the room, hitting matthew. as he lay dying in katherine s arms, her flatmate dialled 911. after the third orfourth round, ijust remember katherine sheppard screaming that matt had been shot, and when i walked over to the. ran over to the room, i saw he was laying on the bed, with a wound on his head, and just we called 911 instantly and we were trying our best to stop the wound. matthew, from chertsey in surrey, was a former phd student at the university of exeter, now working remotely