Half-empty Idaho campus full of fear and grief after murders
BOISE, Idaho (AP) — In a normal year, University of Idaho students would be bustling between classes and the library, readying for the pre-finals cramming period known as “dead week.”
On Wednesday, however, a little under half the students appeared to be gone, choosing to stay home and take classes online rather than return to the town where the murders of four classmates remain unsolved, said Blaine Eckles, the university's dean of students. Some students who were in attendance were relying on university-hired security staffers to drive them to class because they didn't want to walk across campus alone.
The Moscow Police Department has yet to name a person of interest in the stabbing deaths of Madison Mogen, 21, of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho; Xana Kernodle, 20, of Post Falls, Idaho; Kaylee Goncalves, 21, of Rathdrum, Idaho; and Kernodle’s boyfriend, Ethan Chapin, 20, of Mount Vernon, Washington. The three women lived together in a rental home across the street from campus, and Chapin was there staying that night.
A county coroner said they were likely asleep when they were attacked. Two weeks later investigators have yet to find a murder weapon — believed to be a military-style knife — or elaborate on why they think the killings were “targeted."
The murders have left the university and the small farming community that contains it shell-shocked.
“When we lose any students, especially under these circumstances, my heart is absolutely broken,” Eckles said. “It shakes you to your core a little bit, knowing that in this community, which is incredibly safe in general, can have something this horrific happen.”
Now, as students and faculty members try to navigate a quagmire of grief and fear, government agencies and community members are searching for answers and trying to help...