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Family, friends remember WVU student who died after falling from roof

Family and friends are remembering a West Virginia University student who died after tumbling off the roof of a fraternity house.

Sean Guthrie fell Sunday and died as a result of his injuries on Wednesday. The 20-year-old had been on a ventilator in critical condition at Ruby Memorial Hospital.

Dozens of students gathered to pray for Guthrie, and his loved ones are remembering him as a young man who had a bright future.

“There wasn’t a day that I wasn’t proud of my son,” said his father, Daniel Guthrie. “I would pull into the high school and his name would be on the billboard as student of the month. He was just a fabulous son.”

Sean Guthrie, an engineering major from New Jersey, was at his Kappa Alpha fraternity party early Sunday when he went up to the roof to smoke, lost his footing and fell 20 feet.

His fraternity set up a Go Fund Me page to help the family with funeral costs. They wrote on the site, "Thank you for embodying the perfect scholar, friend, brother, and Mountaineer. You will be missed dearly, Sean."

The fund has already raised more than $19,000. A candlelight vigil is planned at WVU’s football field Thursday night.

Guthrie is the second member of a WVU fraternity to die in two years. Greek Life activities were suspended for a time after freshman Nolan Burch died in 2014.

Burch was a pledge for Kappa Sigma when he died in late 2014. Investigators learned that Burch and 19 other pledges were blindfolded and given an entire bottle of alcohol. Burch’s blood alcohol level was more than six times the legal limit for driving. Two of his fraternity brothers were charged and his family has sued the university, the fraternity and others.