Gallaudet Freshman Is Charged in Students’ Killings at School for Deaf
A freshman at Gallaudet University, the nation’s only liberal arts university for the deaf, was charged Tuesday with killing two fellow students over the last five months.
Police Chief Charles Ramsey said robbery was the motive in both killings. He said Joseph Mesa Jr., 20, of Guam, is expected to be arraigned today on two counts of felony murder in the deaths of Benjamin Varner and Eric F. Plunkett.
Ramsey said at a news conference Tuesday night that police had searched Mesa’s dorm room earlier in the day, but he would not say whether any evidence had been recovered.
Varner, 19, of San Antonio, was found dead of multiple stab wounds Feb. 3 in a fourth-floor dorm room of Cogswell Hall. Plunkett, 19, of Burnsville, Minn., also a freshman, was found beaten to death in a first-floor room of the same dorm on Sept. 28.
The killings shocked the close-knit community of 2,000 students at Gallaudet, which was established by Congress in 1864 as the country’s only four-year liberal arts university for the deaf and hearing impaired.
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