For the second time in three days, a university student has died after being found unresponsive outside a campus building as temperatures dipped into the negatives across much of the county last week.
Authorities said the 19-year-old University of Vermont student was found lying unresponsive in snow behind a business in Burlington early Saturday. Foul play was not immediately suspected.
The university identified him as Connor Gage, a first-year student from Little Falls, New York, who was majoring in Neuroscience.
Police said he’s believed to have been cutting through a parking lot when he was stopped by a fence. Temperatures were between -1 and -4 degrees at the time, and he was not adequately dressed for the cold, police said.
“We extend our deepest condolences to Connor’s family,” school officials said in a statement. “Our sincere thoughts of care and sympathy are also extended to his friends, classmates, and to faculty and staff who were close to him.”
The student’s death follows police at the University of Iowa finding an 18-year-old student unconscious behind an academic building early Wednesday morning.
Gerald Beltz, a first-year student from Cedar Rapids who was on the pre-medicine track, was transported to a hospital where he later died. Foul play is also not suspected in his death and alcohol was not found in his system, police said.
The deaths of at least 21 others are linked to a polar vortex that spread from the Midwest to the Northeast last week, bringing historically low temperatures to several locales.