Investigation continues into crash that killed 4 Yale students
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Posted 6:51PM on Saturday, January 18, 2003
NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT - State police, federal transportation officials and a fraternity's national officers on Saturday investigated a car crash that killed four Yale students and injured five others. <br>
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Most of the victims were members of the Bulldog football or baseball teams. <br>
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Three students sophomore Kyle Burnat, 19, of Atlanta; junior Sean Fenton, 20, of Newport Beach, Calif.; and sophomore Andrew Dwyer, 19, of Hobe Sound, Fla. all died Friday from severe head injuries, the state medical examiner's office said Saturday. <br>
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A fourth student, sophomore Nicholas G. Grass, 19, of Holyoke, Mass., died Saturday afternoon at St. Vincent's Medical Center in Bridgeport, hospital spokeswoman Lucinda Ames said. <br>
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Burnat, a sophomore and pitcher on the Yale baseball team, attended Woodward Academy in College Park, Ga. He was a summer intern for U.S. Sen. Zell Miller and a star on the senator's softball team. <br>
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``Kyle was a very, very special child,'' said his father, Lawrence Burnat. ``He excelled in everything that he did and always exceeded his parents' expectations'' <br>
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There was little visible reaction to the tragedy on campus Saturday. The U.S. flag on the campus' main flagpole was lowered to half-staff. Home athletic events resumed after a daylong hiatus in memory of the killed and injured students. <br>
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A memorial service was held Friday night at Yale's gymnasium, where the Yale and Brown men's basketball teams were scheduled to play Saturday evening. <br>
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The nine students were crowded into a sport utility vehicle and were returning from a Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity event in New York at about 5 a.m. on Interstate 95 in Fairfield when the SUV hit a jackknifed tractor-trailer.