BLOOMSBURG, Pa. — Students at Bloomsburg University are mourning the loss of another classmate.
Five students have died this academic year.
To be clear, none of these student deaths are related. However, university officials said each of these losses is difficult on the campus community.
On Monday, senior Sean Lenahan, 22, was found dead in his off-campus apartment.
Justin King, Curtis Melville, Nicholas Medveckus, Michael Somerville, and now Sean Lenahan have all passed away since September.
No foul play is suspected in the first four deaths. Lenahan’s death is still under investigation.
“All of us are pretty surprised because none of this has really ever happened before in my four years of being here. Five deaths in the span of a couple of months is pretty insane,” senior Ian McArdle said.
“Any campus of our size of 8,000 students that suffers one death in a year is a lot, to have it happen five times is very unusual,” Bloomsburg University Director of Communications Tom McGuire said.
Professors said Sean Lenahan was a model student. He was the president of the Public Relations Student Society of America and earned good grades.
“I’ll remember him like a son. I wish all of my students were like him. Sean really blossomed while he was here, and that’s the saddest part about all this because he finally knew who he was,” Lenahan’s academic advisor Maria Teresita Mendoza-Enright said.
“He was always working hard again, not afraid to work odd hours to get the job done,” McGuire said.
Lenahan worked at the recreation center at Bloomsburg University for two years. Students who work there were too emotional to talk to Newswatch 16 on camera, but they said his death is hitting the community hard.
The university is offering grief counseling sessions.
“Everyone I talk to is pretty beat up about it, but I think we're all in this together,” McArdle said.
An autopsy will be done to determine how Lenahan died.