The father of a journalist slain by Islamic militants grew up in the Philadelphia area, according to the Philadelphia Daily News. Daily News assistant city editor David Lee Preston tweeted a preview of the paper’s Thursday cover reporting that Arthur Sotloff, the father of Steven Sotloff, attended Overbrook High School in West Philadelphia.
A video released by militant group ISIS on Tuesday showed the beheading of Steven Sotloff.
Steven, a 31-year-old Miami native who freelanced for Time and Foreign Policy magazines, had vanished a year ago in Syria and was not seen again until he appeared in the recent ISIS video that showed fellow journalist James Foley's beheading.
In that video, Sotloff, dressed in an orange jumpsuit against an arid Syrian landscape, was threatened with death.
In the second video, distributed Tuesday and titled "A Second Message to America," Sotloff appears in a similar jumpsuit before he is apparently beheaded by a fighter with the Islamic State, the extremist group that has conquered wide swaths of territory across Syria and Iraq and declared itself a caliphate.
Sotloff’s family broke their silence Wednesday evening, saying their son was “no hero” but just a “gentle soul that this world will be without.”
