Freshman brother dies in KY fall

[hoosier]

Fri, May. 03, 2002
2 DEAD
UK student, visitor die in fall from dorm window
School says 2 were wrestling, there was alcohol in room
By Ty Tagami And Linda Blackford
HERALD-LEADER STAFF WRITERS


Throughout the day yesterday, students stopped outside the University of Kentucky's Kirwan Tower Dormitory and embraced, in tears. Others walked by and stared quietly at the third-floor window through which two young men had plunged to their deaths early in the morning.

Freshman Jeffrey Pfetzer, who lived on the dorm's third floor, and Matthew Rzepka, the 22-year-old brother of a student on the third floor, smashed through the glass about 2:30 a.m.

Pfetzer, a 19-year-old from Villa Hills in Northern Kentucky, died at the scene. Rzepka, who had come from Bowling Green to help his younger brother move home, survived a little longer: He was pronounced dead at the University of Kentucky Hospital. The Fayette County coroner's office said both died of head injuries.

UK police are investigating, and UK officials are saying little other than that the young men were wrestling and that there was alcohol in the dorm lounge area even though alcohol is banned on campus.

That was cause for concern for UK President Lee Todd. "We have one of the most stringent alcohol policies around, but we're going to be looking at the enforcement issue," he said yesterday.

Todd and his wife, Patsy, had been up since early morning. They walked among the roughly 150 students who gathered outside the dormitory by 3 a.m., beyond the police tape that marked off the scene.

Word had spread quickly across campus and students were tense, wondering whether it was a friend who had died.

This is finals week at UK, and Todd asked that faculty members "make reasonable accommodations" for grieving students. Grief counselors set up on the 23rd floor of the dorm within an hour of the deaths. By yesterday afternoon, they had moved to a nearby building.

Lindsey Galloway, a 19-year-old freshman who lives on the dorm's sixth floor, said she was in bed when she heard screaming outside. She went to the lounge down the hall to find out what was going on. Through the window she saw a young man crouched by the bodies below. "He was on the ground screaming, 'That's my brother, that's my brother.'" Galloway said she thought the man screaming was Justin Rzepka, Matthew's brother.

The young men on the third floor of Kirwan Tower said Pfetzer and Justin Rzepka were part of an unusually tight-knit group of dorm mates. The entire floor gathered regularly to play soccer or toss baseballs in the hallways -- and to wrestle, said Len Harper, a 19-year-old who lived next door to Justin Rzepka.

Harper said he saw the Rzepka brothers leave the dorm with Pfetzer about 11 p.m. Wednesday. He said he did not know where they were going.

UK officials would not shed any light on where they went. UK spokeswoman Mary Margaret Colliver said she couldn't comment about an investigation. She also had little to say about the window through which the two fell.

The quarter-inch-thick pane of annealed, or regular, glass was installed when Kirwan Tower was built in 1966. In 1973, federal codes mandated that new buildings use safety glass, the kind used in car windshields and in high-activity areas, such as lounges, said Tony O'Nan, the owner of a commercial glass company in Lexington.

"Tempered glass will withstand five times the impact of regular annealed glass," O'Nan said. "The likelihood of them falling out would have been nil or none had it been tempered."

UK has been installing safety glass in windows as they needed replacement. "I don't think we're worried about this from a safety issue," Colliver said.

The window through which the two students fell apparently was not the only one broken yesterday morning. Jeremy Arnold, an 18-year-old from Louisville who lives on the third floor of Kirwan Tower, said he saw a new crack in a second pane of glass in the lounge yesterday. That pane was replaced yesterday along with the one through which the young men fell. Colliver said she didn't know why the second pane was replaced.

Matthew Rzepka was once a UK student, but transferred to Western Kentucky University in 1999. A high school football star, he became the quarterback of the semi-pro Bowling Green Blitz football team when it formed last year. Coach Kaelin Byrd said Rzepka's skills helped guide the team to a Super Bowl victory in Zanesville, Ohio, last year.

Weston Vernon played football with Rzepka on both the Blitz team and at Greenwood High. He remembered his teammate as "loud, confident, excited always, very outgoing ... . He could have a conversation with the wall."

Students at UK said much the same about Pfetzer. His fraternity brothers at Kappa Sigma remembered how he turned up at both Christmas and Halloween parties wearing a pair of fire-engine red slacks and a green shirt, looking like a giant elf. Pfetzer joined the fraternity in the fall and was already chair of the fraternity's intramural sports teams.

Pfetzer graduated from Covington Catholic High School last year, the same school his father and older brother attended. A younger brother, Doug, is a junior there now.

"He was a good, above-average student. He was a gentle guy who loved people, and a good, wholesome citizen," said principal Jack Kennevan.

Pfetzer played soccer all four years there and was the prom king his senior year. The school held a prayer service yesterday afternoon.

Last night, Kappa Sigma held its own candlelight vigil to mourn. An estimated 200 students attended along with the Todds, UK officials and clergymen.

Barry Jamison, a Kappa Sigma who pledged the fraternity with Pfetzer, said the 6-foot tall man weighed about 190 pounds and loved to wrestle. "He was scrappy," said Jamison, who went to Panama City, Fla., with Pfetzer on spring break, and wrestled with him there.

"He was constant entertainment," Jamison said. "When he wrestled with people, he never got mad."