Police found the body of Northern Illinois University junior Marlon Blue in an area retention pond at 10:30 a.m. Sunday, according to Lt. Jim Kayes of the DeKalb Police Department.
Friends of Blue, who last saw him around 2 a.m. Saturday morning, reported the 21-year-old biology major missing Saturday afternoon after a stranger answered Blue’s cellular phone, according to Kayes. The man said he discovered the phone on the sidewalk outside an off-campus apartment building.
Kayes said Blue left friends early Saturday morning to meet another friend at the building where his phone was discovered.
“He’d been up with his friends doing some bar-hopping and he was fairly intoxicated, according to his friends,” Kayes said. “[His friends] dropped him off about two blocks from the apartment house so he could meet with friends [who lived in the building].” Kayes added the building is located two blocks from the pond where police later found Blue’s body.
Kayes said Blue told his friends he had to “go to the bathroom first” before entering the building, but Blue never made it inside. “His friends thought he had just walked home,” Kayes said. Blue lived on the NIU campus in the Stevenson Towers residence hall.
When Blue’s friends returned to the building to reclaim Blue’s cellular phone, they found the shirt he was wearing that night, Kayes said.
“We had bloodhounds come out; they smelled the shirt and went right to the pond,” he said. Police then called a diving team to search the pond, and divers discovered Blue’s body submerged in nearly eight feet of water.
Kayes said Blue’s death was purely accidental. “He had a pretty high blood-alcohol content, and he was wandering around in the dark,” he said. Kayes noted that Blue was fully clothed and was not robbed.
“You get one good mouthful [of water], and panic sets in,” Kayes said. “[The addition of alcohol] makes a huge difference.”
NIU sophomore Valerie Geer, who lives a block away from the pond, said the mood was very somber on campus after police discovered Blue’s body.
Contrary to Kayes, Geer said she overheard some students discussing Blue’s death on a campus bus, and the group did not think Blue was merely going for a swim but that his death was a result of something else.
Geer added that while nothing similar had happened in her college career, NIU fixed another safety problem on campus involving a dangerous intersection after several car accidents in that area of campus. She said the NIU campus works to ensure the safety of students.
“[NIU] is completely remodeling [the intersection] over the summer to take care of the problem, and put police at the crosswalks during busy hours when classes are going on,” Geer said.
While the university is taking steps to ensure the safety of its students, Geer said the campus is still in shock after Blue’s death. “Nothing like this has ever happened here before,” she said.
