Seoul crowd crush victims: An actor. A student. The ‘life of the party.’

Since his freshman year of college, Steven Blesi had dreamed of spending a semester abroad. The coronavirus pandemic delayed it for two years. But this fall, the Marietta, Ga., native and Kennesaw State University junior finally got his chance. “He was an extrovert; he was full of adventure,” his father, Steve Blesi, said in an interview with The Washington Post. “And this was his first big adventure.”

Blesi was partway through the semester when, his family said, he became one of more than 150 people killed as a Halloween celebration in Seoul became so tightly packed that many could not breathe. He was 20 years old. He loved basketball and his pets — a gecko, turtles and hermit crabs. He became an Eagle Scout like his brother, Joey, who is older by about a year, and went to college with hopes of working in international business.

Blesi’s father and his wife had just returned home from grocery shopping Saturday when his brother contacted them: Had they seen what happened in Seoul? Was Steven okay? The family was “constantly calling and calling and calling and calling with no answer,” his father said. They are making arrangements for Blesi’s remains to be returned to the United States, where “he’ll be with us from here to the day we die.” — Brittany Shammas