Officials in Dubuque are hoping to learn more about the death of a Loras College student today from autopsy results. Police found 19-year-old Audrey Fitzgerald of Independence dead in her dorm room at Loras’s Binz Hall Sunday. Right now authorities still don’t know how she died and students and staff at the Catholic college have gathered to pray.
Loras Student Alan Dietzenbach said the death has an impact on everyone. "It’s not like a big school where it might be more common. It’s hard hitting and I think you can see it in everyone’s faces," Dietzenbach says.
Assistant Police Chief Terry Tobin Dubuque police say Loras security guards were asked to check Fitzgerald’s dorm room Sunday evening. Tobin says Fitzgerald did live alone in a single dorm room, and at the time she was found, she was by herself. Police will not describe the position of Fitzgerald’s body when she was discovered dead. They do say she had been dead for a length of time before her body was found.
Fitzgerald’s body was taken to the state medical examiner for an autopsy, with preliminary results expected sometime today.