It’s been a bad year for Connecticut colleges. Last night at UCONN, Jasper Howard, 20, the starting cornerback for the varsity football team, was stabbed and killed. We at Wesleyan can all understand the trauma that must be gripping the Storrs campus at the moment, and I want to send our support to the UCONN community, as well as to my friends there.
Apparently, the incident occurred outside a campus dance party a little after midnight. Campus police were at the party while it happened, and the stabbing was apparently precluded by some sort of group fight that started after a fire alarm was pulled. The police do not believe that a UCONN student stabbed Howard. Another student was stabbed in the incident but is still alive.
Hours before, Howard was being interviewed by the Associated Press about his critical role in an important victory for the football team that afternoon.
According to the Hartford Courant, Howard came from a tough background in Miami and also had a child on the way. Awful.
Campus police were at the party and one of the officers outside was approached about the stabbings. Police said two people were stabbed and were found near each other on Hillside Road. Both were taken by UConn ambulances to Windham Community Memorial Hospital.
Blicher could offer no details about the stabbings, where they occurred or how many.
“There is no specific reason to believe he [the suspect] is a danger to our community and I will point out the fact that this stabbing was subsequent to an altercation that occurred so I will call this not a random act of violence. The university does not have an individual walking around just stabbing people. This was definitely subsequent to the altercation that occurred.”
Howard was airlifted by Life Star to St. Francis where he died.
“I was called into the operating room to identify the body, 4, 4:30 [a.m. Sunday], somewhere in that range,” UConn football coach Randy Edsall said. “And then I had the — got on the phone with the doctor, Dr. ] Marshall, and had to make a phone call to Jasper’s family. I proceeded from there to go down and address the student-athletes who were there, the students who were there in a room and needless to say, that was not a very enjoyable moment for me.
The Courant story also mentions Annie Le and Johanna.
Howard’s death makes him the third Connecticut college student killed on or near campus in the past six months. In September, Yale University graduate student Annie Le, 24, was found strangled and stuffed into a wall in a school laboratory. Raymond Clark III, 24, who was working as a university lab technician in Le’s research building, has been charged with her murder. In May, Wesleyan University junior Johanna Justin-Jinich was working at a university bookstore and café a few blocks from campus when Stephen Morgan, whom police said stalked her, allegedly walked in and fatally shot her.
More: http://www.courant.com/sports/uconn-football/hc-uconn-stabbing-jasper-howard-1018,0,69181.story
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