{"id":24142,"date":"2025-01-02T20:08:05","date_gmt":"2025-01-03T03:08:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/fort-lewis-college-student-dies-on-campus\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T04:49:00","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:49:00","slug":"fort-lewis-college-student-dies-on-campus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/fort-lewis-college-student-dies-on-campus\/","title":{"rendered":"Fort Lewis College student dies on campus"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Ruby
Ruby Iker, 19, with her mother Anna Iker, died Wednesday in a Fort Lewis College residence. (Courtesy of Anna Iker)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

A second-year engineering student at Fort Lewis College was found dead in a college residence Wednesday, according to email sent by interim President Steve Schwartz to the student body.<\/p>\n

Ruby Anne Iker, 19, died by an apparent suicide, La Plata County Coroner Jann Smith confirmed. Smith responded to a call on campus around noon on New Year\u2019s Day after college staff conducted a welfare check at the request of Iker\u2019s family.<\/p>\n

\n

For help<\/h4>\n

Help for people having suicidal thoughts or for those who fear a person is considering suicide:<\/p>\n

Axis Care Hotline<\/strong>:24\/7 local response to your crisis & behavioral health needs: 247-5245<\/p>\n

NATIONAL SUICIDE PREVENTION HOTLINE<\/strong>:988<\/p>\n

RED NACIONAL DE PREVENCI\u00d3N DEL SUICIDIO<\/strong>:(888) 628-9454<\/p>\n

FORT LEWIS COLLEGE COUNSELING CENTER<\/strong>:247-7212<\/p>\n

BOYS TOWN HOTLINE<\/strong>:(800) 448-3000.<\/p>\n

SAFE2TELL COLORADO<\/strong>:(877) 542-7233 or safe2tell.org<\/p>\n

COLORADO CRISIS SUPPORT LINE<\/strong>:(844) 493-8255 or text \u201cTALK\u201d to 38255 or online at coloradocrisisservices.org to access a live chat available in 17 languages. The line has mental-health professionals available to talk to adults or youths 24 hours a day.<\/p>\n

AMERICAN FOUNDATION FOR SUICIDE PREVENTION<\/strong>:Colorado chapter information available at afsp.org\/chapter\/afsp-colorado\/<\/p>\n

FOR MEN<\/strong>:A website for adult men contemplating suicide is available at mantherapy.org<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Iker was from Durant, Oklahoma.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to acknowledge that hearing about the death of an FLC community member, particularly involving suicide, can have various impacts,\u201d Schwartz wrote to the community. \u201cIt hurts to lose one of our community members. This type of loss affects all of us in different ways, and experiencing a wide range of feelings and responses is normal.\u201d<\/p>\n

The college\u2019s counseling center will reopen for regular hours on Jan. 13.<\/p>\n

\"Ruby
Ruby Iker, 19, with her father Brandon Iker, died Wednesday in a Fort Lewis College residence. (Courtesy of Anna Iker)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

rschafir@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Iker, 19, was a second-year engineering student<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24143,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[132,28,955],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-24142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-fort-lewis-college","tag-headlines","tag-suicide"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24142"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78419,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24142\/revisions\/78419"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24142"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=24142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}