University of Iowa student, an ‘absolute original,’ dies

IOWA CITY - The University of Iowa and Cedar Rapids Kennedy High School communities are among those mourning the loss of an 'absolute original” teenager who was found unresponsive late Saturday in a UI residence hall.

Sean Wu, 18, who graduated from Kennedy last spring and began at the UI in the fall, was in the university's honor program, a member of the UI's Bijou film board and known for his creativity and love of cinema, according to friends and instructors.

'Sean Wu, you will be greatly missed,” one friend, UI student Khadidja Elkeurti, wrote on his Facebook page. 'You left an impact on so many of us, whether through your memes, your dabs, your puns, your absolute passion for Kanye and so much more. I am forever honored to have been able to call you a friend. We'll miss you, you absolute goof.”

UI police were called at 10:44 p.m. Saturday to the Daum Residence Hall on a report of an unresponsive man. The caller said the man had been drinking earlier, according to UI spokeswoman Hayley Bruce.

Police arrived three minutes later. Wu was taken to the UI Hospitals and Clinics, where he died, officials said.

Witnesses with Wu in the dormitory said he had 'suddenly tensed up, as if he was having a seizure, and collapsed,” Bruce said. Authorities are investigating but have not yet determined a cause of death.

The UI was offering counseling to students struggling with the loss.

Over the weekend, Kennedy High Principal Jason Kline sent a message to families telling them of the death.

'As Sean was strongly connected to many who are still Kennedy students, we felt it important to let you know that we will have additional counseling support on hand (Monday) and this week as necessary for any student who might need assistance or help,” he wrote.

Sunday, Wu's twin brother, Austin Wu, posted a message on Facebook about the death:

'His page will be memorialized and left standing in its current state. There, feel free to leave condolences, farewells, and anything you might think Sean would have enjoyed seeing.”

More than 120 people had posted comments on that message by midday Monday, and many more had posted on his social media profile.

'This is impossible to get my head around,” one of his former teachers, Michael Ayers, wrote. 'Sean was an absolute original, and I will never forget having had him in class. The world will never know what it lost in creativity and wit to have him gone from us so young.”

According to the page, Wu moved from Arizona and his mother works at Rockwell Collins.

Wu - according to the Bijou Film Board, a nonprofit, student-run organization - was on the Bijou Horizons Committee. In his online bio for that group, he called himself a 'longtime champion of world cinema” who was on the pre-med study track 'but that is subject to change.”

Through a social network committed to sharing thoughts on films, Wu reviewed more than 1,000 - listing among his favorites as 'Once Upon a Time in America,” 'On the Waterfront,” 'Vertigo” and '8½.”

In high school, Wu worked with a teacher to create a video about 'What Teachers Do on Half Days” for a pep assembly. Kline praised the satirical effort, set to the song 'Uptown Funk,” for getting nearly 500,000 views on social media.

Mary Mathis, a photographer and UI student, said Wu had contacted her to take senior photos for him and his brother. She said Wu sent examples of ideas.

'We stopped at Taco Bell, and Sean wanted me to get pictures of him eating his taco and drinking his Baja Blast,” she wrote in an email.

Mathis said she told a friend that Wu was 'one of those people that I thought would change the world.”

'Later I thought about that statement,” she said. 'He didn't need to keep living to change the world. He already has and will keep doing so.”