Nov 9, 2007 11:00 am US/Eastern
Upstate Off-Campus Fire Kills 2 Students
1 Rochester Institute Of Technology Student Injured, 3 Others Escape
ROCHESTER, N.Y. (CBS) ―
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Rochester Institute Of Technology
A fire at an off-campus house killed two people -- one of them a student at Rochester Institute of Technology -- and critically injured another student early Friday.
Killed were Seth Policzer, 21, of Parkland, Fla., who was in his fourth year in computer engineering, and Syed Ali Turab, 21, of New Milford, N.J., university officials said. Details on Turab's major were not immediately known.
The injured victim, Michael DiCocco, was rescued by firefighters from a second-floor window. He is a fourth-year industrial design student from Canastota in central New York, they said.
A statement from the institute said three other R.I.T. students escaped the fire unharmed.
The flames erupted at around 2:30 a.m. at the 21/2-story house in a city neighborhood, fire officials said. The university campus sits on the edge of the city in the suburb of Henrietta.
"They was all good kids, they didn't bother nobody. I feel bad for them," neighbor Hector Perez, 43, said. Perez said he smelled smoke while watching television at his girlfriend's apartment nearby and they went out and saw the single-family house in flames.
"It was almost like a dream, like not real," he said.
One body was found on the first floor and another on an upper floor, Deputy Fire Chief Bill Curran said. The injured student, who was being treated at a hospital, did not appear to have life-threatening injuries, university spokesman Paul Stella said.
The cause of the fire is under investigation.
A moment of silence was being planned for Friday afternoon's inauguration of William Destler, a top administrator at the University of Maryland who replaced Al Simone as the ninth president of R.I.T., which enrolls almost 16,000 students.
The school was also planning a memorial service and was offering counseling for students, according to the statement.
(© 2009 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
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