N.C. fire victims honored

7 college students named on unveiled monument

OCEAN ISLE BEACH, N.C. — Students, parents and friends watched as a steel cross and stone marker were unveiled at a private memorial service Friday to honor seven college students killed in a beach house fire last fall.

The cross-shaped monument and memorial stone has each victim's name, including one from the Lowcountry, and the phrase "friends together forever" inscribed on it. It sits at the base of the Odell Williamson Bridge, which links Ocean Isle Beach to the Brunswick County mainland.

A private donor provided the monument.

About 80 people attended the ceremony, including Ocean Isle Beach Mayor Debbie Smith.

American flags marked the road adjacent to the memorial site. Several people laid floral arrangements at the base of the monument, and a lone bagpiper played.

Six students from the University of South Carolina and one from Clemson University were killed in the Oct. 28 blaze. All seven students died from smoke inhalation and carbon monoxide poisoning.

Six other USC students survived the fire. They were Fallon Sposato, 19; Eugene Ray Charles, 19; Katherine Elizabeth Auman, 21; Ashley Nicole Perdue, 18; Andrew Edward Rhea, 19; and Tripp Wylie, 20.

The USC students who died in the fire were Cassidy Fae Pendley, 18, of North Charleston; Lauren Astrid Mahon, 18; Justin Michael Anderson, 19; Travis Lane Cale, 19; Allison Walden, 18; and William Rhea, 18.

Emily Lauren Yelton, 18, was the Clemson sophomore killed in the fire.

"It's like the last way of saying goodbye, I think," said Mahon's mother, Kaaren Mann. "I like the idea of her being at rest somewhere, and I've never kind of come entirely to terms with how she died."