Lives, deaths of 2 students share tragic symmetry

there is something white wrapped around his hand. He holds it with his other hand close to his body.

Mr. Likar, the LaRoche College professor and retired FBI supervisory special agent, studied the video numerous times.

“It’s obvious he was in trouble during that video. Could that [altercation in the apartment] weaken somebody to make them disoriented where they would actually fall into the water? That’s obviously a possibility,” Mr. Likar said.

Detective Abraham said polygraph tests indicated the roommates were being truthful. He said the roommates believe it was either Paul’s elbow, shoulder or an object that caused the hole in the wall.

“I can’t theorize as to what’s going on with him,” Detective Abraham said of the video. “We’re in a facts-based business and we capture him on video walking down the street. I don’t take anything else from that other than he’s holding his hand.”

The time shown on the tape was 2:47 a.m. — shortly after a different surveillance camera shows the roommates returning to the apartment. Those time stamps lead Paul’s parents to believe the physical altercation occurred shortly before Paul is seen on the tape and not earlier as the roommates said. But Detective Abraham said the roommates’ statements were consistent.

Walking west as he was shown in the video, Paul would have had a circuitous route of about nine blocks to get access to the water near a boat launch at South Side Riverfront Park. The 10th Street Bridge was even farther.

In the end, Paul’s body was found March 19, 2015, floating face down in the Ohio River near the north end of Wheeling Island in West Virginia. The body was nude but for a black watch with a rubber band on the left wrist. Dental records secured by Ellen Kochu provided positive identification that it was Paul’s body.

The autopsy noted there was a superficial cut — about three-eighths of an inch — on the palm of the right hand. That would correspond to the story that he cut his hand on a glass in the apartment.

But more significantly, the autopsy found three fractured ribs on Paul’s left-side, one of them displaced, and a 1-inch wound on his scalp. The medical examiner said that because Paul’s body had been in the water for three months, he couldn’t say whether those injuries happened while Paul was alive or after he drowned.

A Wheeling police sergeant said the medical examiner felt that a body being in fast, high water for three months while passing through seven or eight locks and dams could have pulled off the clothing. Dr. Wecht, a former Allegheny County coroner, disputes that possibility.

Paul’s parents feel foul play was involved, pointing to the strangeness of his disappearance, the injuries, the absence of clothing.

Pittsburgh Police Cmdr. Victor Joseph, who heads the major crimes unit, said detectives won’t speculate what might have occurred in Paul’s case, or in any other case for that matter.

“It’s a suspicious death. It’s not closed,” he said. “If other evidence is developed ... then that information will be presented as well. If there’s a determination that things should change, it would be up to that medical examiner.”

Dakota’s story