Former Student Found Dead at Cloyne

A 26-year-old man who friends said was a former UC Berkeley student was found dead last Friday in a Northside co-op, according to officials from the Alameda County Coroner's Office.

Fre Hindeya, identified by the coroner as a Richmond resident, was found early Friday evening in a room of the Cloyne Court co-op on Ridge Road.

Campus police and Berkeley firefighters found the man in a bed after responding to a 911 call from a co-op manager placed at 5:51 p.m., said UCPD Assistant Chief Mitch Celaya.

The caller described the man's death as a drug overdose, Celaya said.

Police are waiting on the results of an autopsy that coroner's office officials said would be conducted today or tomorrow.

Police believe the man died minutes before a resident found him and placed the 911 call.

A criminal investigation is ongoing, Celaya said, although there is no evidence indicating a specific cause of death.

According to friends, on Friday evening Hindeya was visiting Cloyne, where he had lived sometime in the last two years after graduating UC Berkeley.

University officials could not be reached over the weekend, but recent UC Berkeley alumnus David Smith said he attended Hindeya's graduation in spring 2002. The president of Delta Upsilon, Benito Delgado-Olson said he believed Hindeya was a statistics major.

Smith, who met Hindeya in 2000 when both men were members of Delta Upsilon fraternity, said Hindeya had held numerous jobs in the Bay Area over the last four years.

Many of those jobs were community service related, Smith said, including working for AmeriCorps and coaching a junior high school basketball team.

Last summer, Hindeya moved to a Delta Tau Delta fraternity room in search of a quiet place to focus without excessive partying, said UC Berkeley junior Eric Englehart, who lived in the next room.

Friends described Hindeya as exceptionally warm and intensely social.

"He was a confidante, someone you could tell anything to," Smith said. "It's nice to have a person like that. Fre was that person not just for me, but for dozens and dozens of people."

The family is soliciting memories and photographs of Hindeya, which can be submitted via a memorial Facebook group, Smith said.

A family member said Hindeya's mother was not available to speak yesterday.

A correction to this article can be found here.

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