Student Stabbed to Death in Melee at Cornell

Police investigating a brawl on the Cornell University campus that killed an Ithaca College student and injured another Ithaca student are asking witnesses with cellphone video to come forward. The students were stabbed around 2am Sunday during a large fight after several hundred college-age people attended a student-organized event at the Cornell student union, authorities said. Officials identified the slain student as Anthony Nazaire, a 19-year-old sophomore majoring in business administration from Brooklyn, reports the AP. "He graduated from Brooklyn Theatre Arts High School, and at IC he was a member of the executive board of Brothers4Brothers, a student organization dedicated to empowering men of color on our campus," said Ithaca College President Tom Rochon.

Police did not identify any suspects in the stabbing, which happened as people were leaving an event organized by the Omega Psi Phi fraternity at Cornell's Willard Straight Hall. They said they were interviewing witnesses and believe based on surveillance footage that some captured the killing on video. "I hope they get caught and justice is done," Nazaire's mother, Katia Toussaint, told the New York Daily News on Monday. "I didn't send my son to school to get murdered." Naizaire's godfather, Jacques Dorsainvil, told the newspaper Nazaire "was an intelligent man, polite with everyone. I don't get it, why this happened to us. Everybody knows he's a gift from God." The other unidentified Ithaca student was treated at a hospital and released. (More Cornell University stories.)