Rowan student dies after beating

The beating death of a Rowan University student turned a frolicsome homecoming weekend into a tense day and night yesterday with security and students on high alert.

The attack on Donald Farrell, 19, of Boonton Township, Morris County, was eerily similar to a fatal assault on a Kutztown University student early this semester.

Farrell was walking from his off-campus apartment complex with three friends shortly after 9 p.m. on Saturday when five men approached the group and asked where they could find a campus party, according to the Gloucester County Prosecutor's Office.

As Farrell pointed to the nearby Beau Rivage Apartments, where he lived, he was viciously attacked by two of the men and robbed of his wallet and cell phone, police said. Farrell died at 1:47 p.m. yesterday at Cooper University Hospital in Camden from head and stomach injuries.

Joe Cardona, spokesman for the 10,000-student university in Glassboro, said this was the second random attack on campus since the fall semester began. Over Labor Day weekend, a student was mugged by an outsider, who was later arrested. The student suffered minor injuries, Cardona said.

The assault on Farrell comes less than two months after the random beating death of freshman Kyle Quinn at Kutztown University, another college in a usually serene setting.

Quinn was walking alone to his dormitory on Sept. 6 when the three men, two of whom are brothers, attacked him. They have been charged with murder.

At Rowan, a former teacher's college that stepped onto the international stage in 1967 as the host of a summit conference between President Lyndon Johnson and Russian Premier Aleksi Kosygin, the scene was somber last night.

"It could have been us. We come to parties and often park here," said Chrissy Warner, 20, of Howell, N.J. "This shouldn't be happening at our school."

Warner said police should focus more on "outsiders causing problems" than on arresting students for nuisance and drinking violations.

Her friend, Maria Sapienza, 20, of Ewing, said the campus should beef up security.

"This incident is going to put our guard up," she said, noting that she already carried pepper spray when she walked on campus. The two students also hoped that the college might provide self-defense classes and shuttle buses to take students around campus.

Jeff Caporusso, 22, of Eastampton, said he too noticed an increase in outsiders coming to campus and committing crimes. "It's so easy to come in here," he said.

Mike McKinney, a sophomore who said he had been a friend of the victim's since they were freshmen last year, said he was shocked by Farrell's death.

"Donald was just a great guy overall," said McKinney, 19, of Hamilton. "He was fun to be around. If anyone was down, he would just bring them up. I never saw him not smiling."

Police said the attackers left Farrell face down on Old Heston Road, a narrow lane near the Triad Apartments, an on-campus housing complex.

They fled in their vehicle, which had been parked in the lot outside a convenience store, XPress Mart, at the corner of Bowe Boulevard and Route 322, the campus' main thoroughfare, according to Cardona.

"This is really a brazen attack, for them to come on a college campus, on homecoming weekend, when so many people were around – it just as well might have been in broad daylight," Cardona said.

Because it was homecoming there were more campus security and local police at the university on Saturday night, Cardona said.

In the ambulance, Farrell twice went into cardiac arrest and had to be revived by medics, Cardona said. At the hospital, Farrell was placed on life support.

One of the attackers was described as a black male in his early 20s, wearing a red baseball cap over dreadlocks. He also was wearing a black hooded sweatshirt with a British flag on the left front side.

The beating is being investigated by the major crimes unit of the Gloucester County Prosecutor's Office, the Glassboro Police Department, and the Rowan University Police Department.