A 21-year-old Vanderbilt University student is among the dead in last week’s collapse of a beachfront condominium tower in Florida, his family and the school said.
Andreas Giannitsopoulos, an economics major heading into his senior year at the Nashville, Tennessee university, was identified Wednesday night as one of 18 confirmed dead in the collapse of Champlain Towers South.
Giannitsopoulos had been staying with his father’s friend at the Surfside condo when the building collapsed early on June 24.
“We extend our deepest condolences to Andreas’ family, friends, classmates and faculty as they deal with this unimaginable tragedy,” the school said in a statement.
Giannitsopoulos graduated from St. Thomas High School in Houston in 2018 before moving on to Vanderbilt, the Tennessean said.
“He was very dedicated, very focused, very hard-working,” St. Thomas President Father James Murphy told the outlet.
“The last few days, the unknowing has been a challenge,” Murphy said. “We’re a faith-filled community, but we also understand reality. This is a hard thing across the board.”
A GoFundMe page set up by the family said Giannitsopoulos was studying economics at Vanderbilt and said he was regarded “as the ideal St. Thomas man, representing goodness, discipline and knowledge.”
His father’s friend, Manuel LaFont, 54, has also been identified among the dead in the Champlain building collapse.
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