State officials release causes of graduate student deaths

Jul. 9, 2014

UPDATE TO THIS ARTICLE: The chief of MIT's mental health services, Alan Siegel, has written a letter regarding recent deaths of MIT community members.

State officials release causes of graduate student deaths

The deaths of graduate students Hadi Kasab and Eliana Hechter, whom MIT lost this spring, have since been ruled suicides.

Hechter, a first-year medical student in Harvard and MIT’s joint Health Sciences and Technology program, died by hanging in April, the Cambridge Day reported in May, citing state police records.

Kasab, who was on track to graduate last month with a master’s degree from MIT’s Computation for Design and Optimization program, was found dead in his dormitory room in March. According to his death certificate, Kasab died of cyanide poisoning.

This determination was released in June. For Kasab’s family in Lebanon, the wait for answers had been prolonged by a backlog of toxicology tests at the state medical examiner’s office, The Boston Globe reported.

Information about MIT’s counseling services can be found at http://together.mit.edu/.

—Leon Lin

2 Comments

Anonymous over 10 years ago

Where's the state officials document? This article is written by MIT , I need to see the primary results of the physical body examination .In Beirut, an official report on the body of Hadi indicates that a crime is taking place but not a suicide . I need to know the truth from state officials.

This is outrageous. At least have the decency to show the full report on the deaths and how you have concluded that it was suicide.