Cal U. student remembered at vigil
Family and friends of Jason Ritter prepare to release balloons Tuesday during a vigil honoring the late Cal U. student Jason Ritter.
Family and friends of Jason Ritter stand together on the California University campus after releasing balloons Tuesday during a vigil honoring the late student.
Cal U student Joe Albert, right, shares memories of Jason Ritter with Kevin Petro, Ritter’s mother’s fiancé.
Adam Brown said he remembers his friend, Jason Ritter, jumping off cliffs into a creek and tying sleds to a quad in the winter in the rural area near Avella where they grew up together.
“He definitely had a sense of adventure, said Brown, a 21-year-old California University student.
He was among a few dozen people who attended a vigil Tuesday for Ritter, a 21-year-old Cal U. student who died last week.
Family and fellow students remembered Ritter as a bright, quiet 21-year-old with an outsized sense of humor and appetite for life.
“I miss him and I love him,” said Marisa Ritter, Jason’s mother. “Nothing worse could happen.”
Jason Ritter was in the gifted program while he attended Avella High School, from where he graduated in 2014.
He was a junior studying business administration in his third year at Cal U.
“He was kind of quiet in his own way, but he was always smiling,” said Kevin Petro, Marisa Ritter’s fiancé. “That was the first thing I noticed.”
Marisa Ritter said her family recently moved in with Petro’s in Washington.
She and Petro described her son as a loving older brother to her son Camden, 15, and his two stepbrothers.
Cal U. student Joe Albert, 21, said he met Jason Ritter through a mutual friend and regularly got coffee with him last year.
“He enjoyed life,” Albert said. “He didn’t get stressed. He didn’t let things phase him.”
Ritter was found dead of asphyxiation in his dorm room April 11, according to a spokesman for Washington County Coroner Tim Warco’s office. The office ruled the death a suicide.
University officials told students of Ritter’s death by email the next day. Officials said a “drop-in reflection space” was open that day, and university counselors were made available.
Sydney Holly, 18, of Beaver Falls spoke during the vigil for her friend, which also included remarks by Pete Ware, a campus minister, candle-lighting ceremony and a release of black and red balloons by his loved ones.
“I wonder what I could have done to prevent something like this from happening to someone I genuinely cared about even though I didn’t know him very long,” Holly told fellow students and others gathered outside Natali Student Center. “He had people that were willing to listen to him and the most important thing right now is for all those people to come together and support each other at a time like this.”
Holly said following the ceremony her friend was “literally the last person I would have thought was struggling because he was so positive and he joked about everything, all the time.”
Brown said the joy his friend brought to life helped him cope with his loss.
“It makes the grieving process easier,” Brown said. “I mean, he died young, but he lived a heck of a life.”
Staff writer Scott Beveridge contributed to this story.