The first death occurred about 12:35 p.m. on Sunday [6 July 2003] when an American soldier who was accompanying United States officials visiting Baghdad University was fatally shot by an unidentified gunman, witnesses and American officials said.
... At the university, several students who said they had witnessed the shooting, outside a cafeteria near the engineering school, said the gunman had pulled out a pistol and fired a single shot at point-blank range into the soldier's head. An American official said the soldier had apparently just left the cafeteria after buying a drink.

The gunman fled, disappearing into the crowd of students, witnesses said. The soldier, whose name was not released, was evacuated to a military hospital, where he later died, military officials said.

A few weeks after the fall of Saddam Hussein, I drove into Fallujah. What a dump -- no disrespect to any Fallujans reading this. I had a late lunch in a seedy cafe full of Sunni men. Not a gal in the joint. And no Westerners except me. As in the movies, everyone stopped talking when I walked through the door...My cuff links were the most stylish in the room, and also the only ones in the room... If you're an infidel and agent of colonialist decadence, you might as well dress the part...The locals watched me -- a few obviously surly and resentful, the rest somewhere between wary and amused. As a parodic courtesy, mein host switched the flickering black-and-white TV from an Arabic station to the BBC, which as usual was full of doom and gloom about the quagmire.