A 19-year-old University of California, Berkeley, student who went missing over the weekend was found dead Monday.
ABC 7 reports Eloi Vasquez, a collegiate soccer player, was struck and killed by a car on Saturday around 2:30 a.m. on a highway near the University of Southern California. Vasquez was visiting the USC campus with teammates from Berkeley. While attending a Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity party, he decided to leave and take a walk. Vasquez had reportedly been drinking and despite his friends' efforts to stop him, he left the party.
He then called a friend in Berkeley, who later said Vasquez sound confused on the phone. He was struck by a car shortly after phoning his friend, when he tried run across several lanes of traffic on the I-10 freeway.
A search effort was launched over the weekend to help find Vasquez. As news of his death broke Monday, school and team officials expressed sorrow over the loss.
"We are absolutely devastated at this tragic news," UC Berkeley Director of Athletics Mike Williams said via a statement on their website. "Eloi was a wonderful young man who excelled both athletically and academically and came to Cal with a passion for learning ... It is a tragedy that such a promising life was taken so soon."
This is tragically the second time in a week that a college student has gone missing and turned up dead. Last week, the body of Jordan Britten, a Central Texas College student, was discovered in a marshy area near Schlitterbahn water park, days after he had been reported missing.
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