A 19-year-old Cal student has died after emergency workers found him unresponsive at a party at the Alpha Delta Phi house Nov. 14, 2025. Credit: TJ Gehling for Berkeleyside
Update, Dec. 1: The young man who died after a drowning incident at a UC Berkeley fraternity party has been identified as George Mauricio Salinas, 19, of San Diego, according to the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office’s Coroner’s Bureau.
Salinas was pronounced dead at 3:50 p.m. on Nov. 17, a little less than three days after police and firefighters found him unresponsive at the Alpha Delta Phi chapter house on Prospect Street. His cause of death remains under investigation, according to the coroner’s office.
UC Berkeley student dies after drowning at fraternity
Original article, Nov. 19: A 19-year-old student has died after a drowning at a UC Berkeley fraternity house pool party Friday night, according to police and university officials.
Details like the young man’s name and precisely when he died were not immediately available Wednesday. Police said they “do not suspect foul play.”
Police and firefighters have cited the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity and the affiliate that owns the chapter house, accusing them of creating a public nuisance and for exceeding by more than half a 200-person limit for a party the chapter was throwing that night.
Police and firefighters went to the Alpha Delta Phi house around 11:26 p.m. after a caller reported an unresponsive person “who had possibly drowned,” Berkeley police spokesperson Officer Byron White said in an email Wednesday.
When police arrived, they walked into a “large party” of “more than 300 people,” White wrote. The area was overcrowded and there was clear evidence of “heavy alcohol consumption.”
The Berkeley Fire Department took the teen to a hospital. He was listed in critical condition and, sometime in the intervening days, died. White said BPD did not have a specific day or time. More details were not immediately available from the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office’s Coroner’s Bureau.
(Police have not specifically named the fraternity but Alpha Delta Phi is the only fraternity house with a pool on the block they did specify, the 2400 block of Prospect Street.)
University officials did not immediately respond to inquiries from Berkeleyside Wednesday. An official with the fraternity’s national organization said the victim had been a guest at the party, and that the organization had suspended the Cal chapter’s operations until further notice.
Editors’ note: This article was updated after publication with additional information.
“*” indicates required fields