Notre Dame Honors Student Killed In Accident
SOUTH BEND, Ind. (CBS) -- Hearts were heavy on the Notre Dame campus Thursday night as the college community remembered one of their own in a Mass.
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Declan Sullivan died Wednesday while videotaping the football team after the lift he was perched on fell to the ground.
Students who knew 20-year-old Declan -- and many who didn't -- came because they are all members of the Norte Dame family. Outside the Basilica of the Sacred Heart, they lined up to remember one of their own, CBS 2's Kristyn Hartman reports.
Inside, their focus was a celebration of his life, not how his life was lost.
But a priest told Sullivan's family, "Tears fall with the loss of your son. They're tears shed campus-wide.
One group that attended the mass went from high school to college with Sullivan.
"He just was the guy that everyone liked," said classmate Allison Hamman. "You can't say a bad thing about Declan."
"He always found the fun side," another student said.
Meanwhile, Notre Dame continues to investigate
"We're going to learn from this, and we're going to be very rigorous in making sure that it's a thorough investigation," said Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick.
One of the primary questions: Why was the junior from Long Grove, a member of a campus video crew, taping football practice on a temporary lift structure during a wind advisory? A probe will look into conditions at the time the lift came crashing to the ground.
Swarbrick set the scene at the news conference Thursday.
"Practice was normal. Plays were being conducted with no difficulty," he said. But soon afterward, a gust of wind hit the practice field, and Gatorade containers and towels began flying around.
"I noticed the netting behind the goal post start to bend dramatically, and I heard a crash," Swarbrick said. The crash was the scissor lift on which Sullivan was standing.
Sullivan put out some ominous tweets just before the accident.
"Gusts of wind up to 60mph well today will be fun at work... I guess I've lived long enough :-/" Sullivan wrote in one post on Twitter and Facebook.
The sarcasm stopped about an hour later, when he wrote, "Holy f--- holy f--- this is terrifying.''
"Did he talk to anybodyl; any conversations he might have had, or any conversations someone had with him -- that will all be part of the investigation," Swarbrick said.
But circumstances don't change the outcome, Declan's family says. They use the word "joyous" to describe him.
A friend said Sullivan came into his own at Notre Dame and loved it there. The Fighting Irish football team will play on Saturday with decals honoring Sullivan on their helmets.
