(Daily360.com) – A student named Josiah Kilman was strangled to death in his dorm room on February 24th and his teammate is suspected of the murder. The 18-year-old was a freshman at Kentucky’s Campbellsville University and a member of the school’s wrestling team. The team was slated to compete in at the Kansas wrestling championship later that week.
Kilman’s body was discovered prior to 1a.m. by someone not yet identified. Authorities say Kilman was living with three roommates but their whereabouts on the night of the murder have not been made public. The alleged killer is Charles “Zeke” Escalera, 21, who is said to have been a sophomore at the school and a wrestling teammate of Kilman. He’s been charged with murder and burglary. Escalera is being held on a $2 million bond at the Taylor County Detention Center in Kansas. Law enforcement has not given any suspected motive for the gruesome manual strangulation of Kilman.
Students at the school have been making public statements expressing their sorrow and offering their condolences to the Kilman family. The Pastor on campus, Trent Creason, called the subsequent week “painful” and one in which God was a central theme among students. He said a larger than usual number of students attended services and received the sacraments. Kilman’s friends described him as gentle, warm and very popular.
Kilman’s death is the most recent in a string of campus fatalities. On the campus of the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, students Celie Rain Montgomery, 26, and Samuel Knopp, 24, were allegedly killed by Kopp’s roommate 26-year-old Cecil Rain Montgomery. Reports are that Montgomery had previously threatened to kill his roommate Knopp after Knopp asked Montgomery to take out the trash.
The murder of nursing student Laken Riley, 22, on the University of Georgia campus allegedly at the hands of an illegal alien named Jose Antonio Ibarra, has been in the headlines over the past week. The hashtag “#sayhername” was written by her mother on social media after the funeral as a cry to deal with the open border situation.
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