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
A 19-year-old student has died after a possible drowning at a UC Berkeley fraternity house pool party Friday night.
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 not been a member, and that the organization had suspended the Cal chapter.
Editors’ note: This article was updated after publication with additional information.
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Alex N. Gecan joined Berkeleyside in 2023 as a senior reporter covering public safety. He has covered criminal justice, courts and breaking and local news for The Middletown Press, Stamford Advocate and…
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