Police investigating alcohol’s role in Radford student’s death

Stephen Ackley
Multimedia Editor

Emily Gale
Contributing Writer

Radford University students and friends are still mourning the death of Sam Mason, a 20-year-old sophomore.

On Friday afternoon, Oct. 15, Mason was found in bed in an off-campus apartment complex. According to an affidavit, Mason had been seen the night before consuming a bottle of liquor at the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity party and had been walked to the apartment “to sleep off the intoxication.” Mason was pledging the fraternity.

Radford police say that foul play was not involved and are investigating whether alcohol was connected with the death.

VCU sophomore Charlie Larson grew up with Mason in Chesterfield and considered him a close friend.

“We never thought that we were going to lose one of our best friends. No one ever thought that this would ever happen to us because when we first heard the news, we didn’t believe it – I didn’t believe it for two days. It’s still sinking in.”

Tyler Colbert, a junior at Radford and friend of Mason, hopes that this incident will not reflect unfairly on the university.

“I hope that fraternities and all of greek life and college kids in general can just take away that you don’t have to be able to drink a lot to impress people. People don’t need to push it to the limit because it is really dangerous.”

Shawn Babine, chief operation officer of TKE, said in an interview with the Roanoke Times that the Radford chapter has been suspended.  The chapter had previously been disciplined by the university for serving alcohol to underage students and had just been allowed to recruit new members this fall.

Larson believes responsibility when drinking could have saved Mason’s life.

“People need to be aware and learn to control themselves and know their limits and help their friends out when their friends are out of control.”

A followup will appear in Monday’s issue covering the response by the VCU community.

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