Southern IL University student killed at music festival remembered as a ‘main character’

This story first appeared in The Southern Illinoisan.

There was an empty seat Monday in Bridget Lescelius’s advertising copywriting class at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.

A desk usually occupied by Jacob Jurinek.

Instead, a grief counselor sat at the front of the room, helping the class in remembering and mourning the SIU junior following his death.

Jurinek, 21, has been identified as one of the eight people killed Friday during Travis Scott’s performance at the Astroworld Music Festival in Houston, Texas. According to published reports, many of the sell-out concert crowd of 50,000 surged toward the stage not long after the rapper appeared on stage, overwhelming security as well as trapping and crushing some in the audience.

Originally from Naperville, Jurinek was reportedly attending the event with his best friend, Franco Patino, 21, a student at the University of Dayton, who also was killed.

In an interview with The Southern, Lescelius rememberd Jurinek as a “main character.”

“There are students that come through any program and then there are students who have a real impact; Jacob was one of those,” Lescelius, a lecturer in the SIU School of Journalism, said. “He loved graphic design and was finding his niche. He was trying to figure out how to make his passion his life’s work.”

She explained that Jurinek approached his work with what she called a mix of wonderment and curiosity. She said class was not the same without him.

“I’m glad we had a counselor there, because to walk into class with his friends and peers without someone to help us through it all would have been really hard. We are just realizing how much we missed him this morning,” she said.

Jurinek will be remembered at a candlelight vigil at SIU’s Faner Hall Monday at 7 p.m.

“We are brokenhearted to lose a member of the Saluki family, Jacob Jurinek, and we extend our deepest condolences to his family and friends,” SIU Chancellor Austin A. Lane said in a statement Sunday. “Jacob was a creative, intelligent young man, with a promising career in journalism and advertising. We understand this comes as a shock to many of our students. If they have mental health concerns, Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) is available to help them. As we mourn this loss in our community, we will keep Jacob’s family and friends in our thoughts.”

Lescelius said Jurinek will be deeply missed.

“He had a huge future ahead of him. I can’t articulate just how passionate he was and we all realized that we were part of his journeying to what life was going to have for him,” she said. “We are devastated.”