A 28-year-old male unaffiliated with the University died suddenly while dancing at around 9:30 p.m. Saturday at the ARCH building at 36th Street and Locust Walk.
Jason Arroyo was attending an event hosted by the Penn Salsa Club when he collapsed onto the floor, Penn Police Captain Joe Fischer said.
Police arrived at the scene and attempted to resuscitate Arroyo with a defibrillator. Before officials arrived, several guests had attempted to perform CPR on Arroyo with no success.
After paramedics were unable to revive Arroyo with the machine, they took him to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania -- where he was pronounced dead.
Though the cause of death is unknown, Fisher said doctors think it was "some type of cardiac arrest."
College junior Josephine Leriche was dancing next to Arroyo when he fell to the ground.
"I saw him dancing with this girl and then he just fell down," Leriche said. "I thought it was a styling thing first of all, but then he didn't move and everyone came around him."
There was nothing unusual about the way Arroyo was dancing; however, he screamed directly before falling, Leriche said.
Leriche said the police took a while to reach the ARCH.
"They called 911 and then [police] came after 10 minutes or something," she said. "It seemed like a long time because we were all waiting."
Steve Leskowitz -- a Center City resident unaffiliated with the University who attended the event and helped to carry Arroyo out on the stretcher -- agreed with Leriche and said that the response was disturbingly slow.
"It was at least 15 minutes until the paramedics arrived," Leskowitz said. "I could have run across the street to the hospital, made a commotion in the lobby and come back in the time it took them."
"There wasn't any sense of emergency" by the response team, he added.
Police could not be reached for further comment on the timeliness of the response.
Approximately 100 people were in attendance at the event when the incident occurred, Leskowitz said.
The event offered free beginner salsa lessons and an evening of dancing for Penn students and members of the community.
