Missing Calif. College Soccer Player Found Dead
Eloi Vasquez, 19, was last heard from early Saturday after a frat party.
— -- A missing California college student has been found dead, the victim of a traffic accident, the LAPD said.
The University of California-Berkeley student, Eloi Vasquez, 19, was visiting friends at the University of Southern California when he was last heard from early Saturday morning.
"Earlier today the Los Angeles Police Department’s Missing Persons Unit learned that the California Highway Patrol conducted an investigation of a tragic traffic collision that took place on the Eastbound 10 Freeway on Saturday, March 28th around 2:25 a.m. During the investigation, the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office confirmed that the pedestrian struck on the freeway was unfortunately our Missing Person, Mr. Eloi Vasquez," LAPD said in a statement.
Vasquez, who played on his school's soccer team, went to a party at the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity with friends but told them that he wanted to go for a walk at around 1:30 a.m., ABC station KABC reports.
According to KABC, he was last heard from less than an hour later, when he reportedly called a friend saying that he was at the beach and having trouble.
"He is a star athlete, a responsible student, and we are a tight-knit family," his mother Wendy Margolin earlier told ABC News. "This is not normal behavior."
When he left the party, he did not have money or identification, the Associated Press reported.
Friends tried to call him later Saturday morning and his phone was either dead or had been turned off.
The family doubled their reward offering to $100,000 today in hopes that it would lead to his discovery.
"Eloi is a wonderful young man who has excelled both academically and athletically here at Cal," the UC-Berkeley athletics department said in a statement released Sunday. "Our entire Cal Athletics family is very concerned for Eloi’s safety and our first priority is to help in any way we can to locate him."
