Four students die in unrelated incidents

A Dental student was accidentally shot.A Dental student was accidentally shot.Three others died in one week. Four University students died in unrelated incidents this summer. Second-year Dental student Alexander Orig died August 8 after he was accidentally shot by a customs security officer at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport in the Philippines, according to Dental School Student Affairs Director Barb Helpin. College sophomore Emily Sachs died May 24 as a result of a heart attack triggered by an asthma attack. Joseph Walters, a 40-year-old part-time student in the Computer Information Science masters program in the School of Engineering, died May 29, also of a heart attack. And Bioengineering doctoral candidate John Marshall died on May 26 of natural causes. Orig, 22, was returning home from a vacation in the city of Manila in the Philippines with his family. Before he could depart on a flight back to the United States, however, he had to go through the airport's customs area, Helpin said. There, a security officer who was reloading his gun accidentally fired and fatally wounded Orig, she said. Orig is survived by his parents and one brother. Sachs was visiting friends on campus May 23 when she experienced an asthma attack, according to Assistant Vice Provost for University Life Barbara Cassel. Sachs had asked her friends to take her to the emergency room, where she was admitted and put on a respirator. During the course of the night, she suffered a cardiac arrest and could not be resuscitated. Her mother, Jo-Ann Sachs, said she cannot figure out why this happened. "I sent her off?perfectly healthy," she said in late May. "And then she died the next day. There was nothing wrong with her except asthma." Sachs was diagnosed with asthma at the age of two. But her friend College sophomore Marla Snyder, who described Sachs as "by far the most genuine human being I think I have ever met," said she never let her condition get in her way. "She accomplished more in 19 years than any of us could expect to accomplish in a lifetime," Snyder said. She said Sachs was always referred to as "little Em" because she was only five feet tall. "But she was definitely not small in spirit," she added. Snyder said she had never been as close with anyone as she was with Sachs. They often referred to each other as sisters, she said. The two were planning to live together next year. "We couldn't wait to decorate and hold dinner parties," Snyder said. Sachs, who was a member of the Chi Omega sorority, was an accomplished dancer and singer. She won both the Miss Dance Pennsylvania title and the Miss Teen Dance New York City title. "She was determined to be on Broadway," Snyder said. "And she would have been." Sachs's family set up a memorial fund at her temple. Contributions in her memory can be sent to the Har Zion Temple at the following address: 491 Bellvue Avenue, Trenton N. J., 08618. Walters was found dead in his hotel room in Cambridge, Mass., where he was attending a class for his job. He was a senior systems programmer. Marshall had taken a medical leave from the University last fall. Cassel said she did not know what his illness was. A memorial service for Orig will be held at 3 p.m. September 9 at the Newman Center Chapel.

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