Student Death Strikes B.U.

Andrew Lawrence, a junior at Boston University’s School of Management (SMG), died the morning of Friday, Nov. 18, of what appears to have been heart failure. He was 20.

Lawrence was found collapsed in the bathroom of his off-campus apartment around 1 a.m. by his roommate Sang Dave Lee, also a junior at SMG, and his girlfriend Ida Teberian, a sophomore at Boston University’s College of Arts and Sciences.

Lee and Teberian administered CPR before paramedics rushed Lawrence to Caritas St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead at 3:09 a.m., according to David Estrada, a spokesman for the Boston Police Department (BPD).

The specific cause of death is unknown, although the BPD has concluded, after performing a medical examination, that Lawrence died of natural causes.

His mother, Diane Lawrence, told the Boston Herald last week that he probably died of a heart arrhythmia, which is a condition that causes an irregular heartbeat.

Colin Riley, Boston University’s director of media relations, said that he could not release information about Lawrence’s death, because the medical examiner has not yet been able to determine a cause.

“It’s in the hands of the Boston Police Department and the medical examiner. Right now, we don’t know anything about what caused [Lawrence’s] death,” he said.

Friends remembered Lawrence, a Westtown, Pa., native, as a compassionate friend who was always looking out for others.

“He was polite, honest, positive, and just a good person in every sense,” said Steven Ettinger, a Boston University junior and one of Lawrence’s close friends.

“He always talked a lot more to people and concentrated on them rather than talking about himself. He had this calming, beautiful wisdom about him that I’ve never seen in anybody before,” he added. “In the three years I knew him, I never heard him say a single negative thing about anybody, because that’s just the kind of person he was.”

Ettinger said that Lawrence rarely talked about his plans for the future, except to discuss the different lessons and values he hoped to teach his children.

On the Friday night of Lawrence’s death, friends and family members held a candlelit vigil outside the chapel in Boston University’s Marsh Plaza, placing pictures of Lawrence and his girlfriend Teberian on the plaza’s “Free at Last” statue.

For more than an hour, they stood in silence to honor and remember a man who had been their friend, brother, and son.

Boston University has responded to Lawrence’s death by making its students aware of the campus resources available to help them cope with the emotional blow.

Riley said those resources include both psychological counseling and access to the chaplains of Marsh Chapel, the school’s interdenominational Christian church.

“It’s a terrible tragedy. It’s a sudden death of a young person, which is always disturbing,” he said. “The university is doing everything we can to help students deal with this.”