Posted on 03/20/2007 1:03:23 PM PDT by Palladin
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - A body found slumped over machinery in a dormitory's high-voltage utility room was identified Tuesday as a 19-year-old Purdue University student who vanished in January, school officials said.
A maintenance worker investigating a "pinging" sound on Monday discovered the body of Wade Steffey, a freshman who was last seen in the area Jan. 13 after he left a fraternity party. The Tippecanoe County coroner identified the body Tuesday.
It appeared he tripped and fell onto a power transformer, Purdue spokeswoman Jeanne Norberg said.
"He is believed to have died instantly," she said.
The maintenance worker had unlocked the utility room from inside the Owen Hall on Monday, Norberg said. Afterward, police discovered that the room's exterior door was closed but that it was unlocked, she said. Officials had said Monday that the ground-level utility room wasn't accessible from Owen Hall and was locked with two sets of keys, one each for two sets of doors.
Officials have removed the exterior door's lock assembly for a forensic examination to determine whether the mechanism works. Norberg said Purdue will conduct an independent investigation to "to find out all we can about this accident occurred."
"We're going to find out. The search for Wade Steffey is over but the search for answers continues," Norberg said.
Steffey's father, Dale, said he was confident Purdue would thoroughly investigate.
"That door should be locked, absolutely," he said.
The area around Owen Hall had been repeatedly searched after Steffey was reported missing, and maintenance staff had opened the utility room, but Norberg said they didn't fully inspect the interior because of the risk posed by the high-voltage equipment.
Power was cut to the coed residence hall that houses about 700 students while the body was removed.
"We have the answer now, the big answer, to where our son is," said Steffey's mother, Dawn Adams, who said she and her husband had felt before the body's discovery that their son was dead.
"Now everyone who was praying for us can have a measure of peace," she said. "This affects so many more people than us. Now there is grief."
Campus officials had organized several searches for Steffey, the most recent a ground search in the area on Sunday. Anna Hirst, an area resident who helped with the searches, described the community's emotion on hearing the news.
"It's absolutely devastating," she said.
Darwin Award.
Good thing this didn't happen in Paris. There would have been riots.
Who was pinging him?
Darwin goes to college.
Yeah, well...we all become Darwin's Award candidates when we drink too much.
It seems like the college kids drink now to purposely get blind drunk. We used to have just enough to get mellow.
AA should get out there in a more highprofile way on the college campuses.
I still think it's a tragedy that this boy's brilliant mind was wasted.
No doubt you are right about drinking habits today. The need to be drunk continues to escape me, but I bow to your observations on that. As to that boy's death being a tragedy, I beg to differ. Was he a great man who fell from a great height because of a single flaw? I don't think so. His death was sad, unfortunate, unhappy, untimely, but it was not tragic. If we were to believe the media, just about every death would be 'tragic,' but some of us still hold out for the maaning of words. :)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.