Believing that "charity is the true love of Christ," a Utah State University student has created a fund to help the family of Sulejman Talovic.

"What the boy did was ... we don't know. From the outset it's selfish," said Jake Freeman. "He left them behind to deal with the aftermath. It's up to us as their neighbors and fellow citizens to put our arms around them."

Freeman has named the account at Wells Fargo Bank the "CITTLOC Memorial Fund." It is an acronym for "Charity Is the True Love of Christ."

"We decided to avoid the kid's name," Freeman said Thursday, adding that he is trying to avoid any negative connotations with the family's name.

A memorial fund has already been set up at Wells Fargo Bank to help the families of the victims of the shootings.

Freeman hopes to give the money raised to the Talovic family to help them with costs to make ends meet. He put in $100 himself.

While many people have sounded off with venom in e-mails to the Deseret Morning News and other news media outlets mostly targeting the Talovic family's Muslim faith, others have expressed sympathy for them.

"They, too, have lost a family member and are undoubtedly suffering as much as, or perhaps even more than, the families of the innocent victims," one woman from Provo e-mailed the Deseret Morning News.

Another called it a "double tragedy."

"I can only imagine the difficulty of losing a loved one in such circumstances. The combination of emotions from grief to guilt to confusion to disbelief they must be feeling, and the difficulty they now face in a world which, unfortunately, can and will show bias, anger and hatred toward them," wrote another.

Freeman said the family's faith or any other circumstances surrounding them doesn't matter right now.

"Muslim, Catholic, I don't care what these people from Bosnia are. They're still human," he said. "It's really unfortunate."

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E-mail: bwinslow@desnews.com