Weinberg senior Corrie Lazar was killed Monday night after being struck by a car in Mount Vernon, Maine, local police said.
Lazar, originally from Seattle, was working as an arts and crafts counselor at Camp Laurel in Readfield, Maine. After transferring from Western Washington University, she became an American Studies major, according to Northwestern’s Office of the Registrar.
While walking along Route 41 in Mount Vernon with two other counselors, she was hit by a car, said Capt. Jon Perkins of the Kennebec County Sheriff’s Office. Lazar was pronounced dead at the scene, and one of the other counselors was hospitalized with non-life threatening injuries, Perkins said.
“It’s a freak accident,” he said. “It’s a very remote area. The car was in the middle of crashing when (the driver’s) path intersected with them. He was on his way off the road.”
The driver, Joseph Rouleau, was driving a 1995 Isuszu Trooper, Perkins said.
Although Rouleau was intoxicated when police arrived on the scene, Perkins said he could not officially confirm the driver’s exact blood alcohol content or if it was above the legal limit, which is .08 in Maine.
“My training says that he was above the legal limit,” Perkins said.
Police are working with the local district attorney’s office, although any indictment will come only after the police finish their investigation, Perkins said.
Keith Klein, a director of Camp Laurel, said campers and counselors were mourning Lazar’s passing. “Our thoughts and prayers are with the family of this incredible young woman,” he said.
At NU, Vice President for University Relations Alan Cubbage said, “as an institution, any time you lose a member of the community in an untimely manner, it’s very difficult. The university extends its sympathies to her family and friends.”
Lazar was a member of the Mock Trial Team and Kappa Delta sorority. She was going to be a Community Assistant at Foster-Walker Complex in the fall, according to The DAILY archives.
Friends and professors from NU described Lazar as bright, outgoing and caring.
“She was the most positive person I ever met,” said Weinberg senior Jennifer Berman, who competed with Lazar on the Mock Trial team. Lazar joined the team last fall, and Berman recalled a lighthearted moment when the team was about to begin competition at the American Mock Trial National Championship Tournament in Des Moines, Iowa in April.
“We were all really nervous,” Berman said. “The captain of the team gave this very serious and passionate speech about how far we had come. Afterward Corrie said, ‘Hey guys, just remember to smile.’ We all thought it was kind of funny at the time. We were all there to win, weren’t we? But that was just the kind of person she was.”
Lazar lived in the Kappa Delta sorority house during the first two quarters of her junior year.
“When you’d see her on the stairs, she’d always smile and ask how your day was,” said Weinberg senior and Kappa Delta President Amy Liebster. “You could tell she genuinely cared.”
Prof. Nicola Beisel taught Lazar in a small 300-level Gender Studies seminar this winter, which Beisel said was the best class she has ever taught at NU.
Beisel, an associate professer of Sociology and Gender Studies, said she remembered one moment from the class in particular. “We were discussing this book about 19th century love letters. Well, all the girls in the class were just aghast at the way these women manipulated men. They played all these games with them, and the girls acted shocked that they could be so manipulative,” she said.
“And Corrie jumped in and said, ‘come on’, and launched into this hilarious monologue about text messages and how she and her friends would spending hours agonizing over them.” Beisel said that Lazar went on to describe how she and her friends, “angsted over what a guy said and what he meant, and would have long conversations just about punctuation and whether to end a text with a period, an exclamation point or an smiley face. Ever since, I haven’t been able to use a smiley face emoticon without thinking of Corrie.”
