2 Washington area students killed in fire off Frostburg State campus

Two college students from the Washington area were killed Friday in a fire at the off-campus apartment they shared while attending Frostburg State University, in Frostburg, Md., authorities said.

They were identified as Evan Kullberg, 23, who graduated from Seneca Valley High School in Montgomery County, and Alyssa Salazar, who graduated from Broadneck High School in Anne Arundel County.

"They were really outstanding young kids who really loved each other and took care of each other to the very end," Kullberg's mother, Karol, said Monday night.

He was a go-getter, a member of the National Guard and an entrepreneur who was part-owner of a pizza parlor in the building where the students lived. She was an early education major and "a really outstanding young woman," Karol Kullberg said.

The Maryland state fire marshal's office said the blaze was accidental and caused by an overheated flue pipe that ran from a wood stove out through a wall in the first floor of the building. The blaze spread to an adjacent apartment and up to the students' second-floor quarters, the fire marshal's office said.

The two were found in their apartment by firefighters about 4:20 a.m. Friday, the fire marshal's office said. Their deaths were attributed to smoke inhalation.

The president of Frostburg State said in a statement that the university community was "heartbroken by this tragic loss of two of our precious students."

A vigil was held for them Sunday night on campus.

Kullberg's mother said he grew up in Germantown and had two older sisters, Kathryn and Kristen, who work in the Washington area. Karol Kullberg said the two students had been at her home in Gaithersburg over Thanksgiving, "happy and full of life and plans."