Ryan Evans, a business major, was alone in his room in Lee Hall when he fell about 5:50 p.m. Saturday, Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hincker said Sunday.

“It looks like one of those tragic accidents,” he said.

Police are investigating the incident and an autopsy was planned Monday.

Family members and students struggled Sunday to come to grips with the death.

“He’d just sent me an e-mail with a picture of the fall foliage, taken from that window,” Evans’ mother, Carlyn Kane, said from the family’s home in Stafford.

Evans 18, was an Eagle Scout and high school honor student who was at Tech on a partial business scholarship, Kane said.

Kane said she saw Evans two weeks ago when she came to Tech for Parents Day. Her son appeared to be enjoying university life, she said.

An uncle had asked Evans to go to Saturday’s Tech football game, but Evans declined, his mother said.

Another student fell from a Lee Hall window in 1990, falling three stories and surviving. In November 1997, a student died after falling from a window on the eighth floor of the Slusher Hall dormitory.