I am looking out the window of my second floor office at the National Association of Scholars in Princeton to the gray bungalow on the other side of Witherspoon Street. It was there on Wednesday morning that 19-year old Justin Warfield died of a heroin overdose. Warfield was a freshman at Rider University’s Westminster Choir College, and was said by his former choir director to “have a shimmering beautiful voice.” Another man, Kiernan Hunt, 19, has been arrested for selling Warfield the drugs.

Wednesday morning after Warfield’s body had been taken down the street to the Princeton Medical Center, the police were diligently combing the area. The story went round that someone had committed suicide, but that doesn’t seem quite the right word for this kind of death. Warfield was, I would guess, playing around with his identity—the common pursuit of college freshmen whose college’s fail to give them any real guidance about how to become an adult. Back home in Maryland, he was a drummer with a band called “The Getaway.” I guess he succeeded.

The story has one other chilling detail. After Warfield passed out, three other students who were with him drew on his body with markers. He breathed his last breath festooned with their graffiti.