Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Ellis Arnold at ellis.arnold@colorado.edu.
Berry “Tyler” Allen, the CU Boulder student who was reported missing on Saturday, April 18, had experienced numerous personal life changes in the weeks leading up to his disappearance, according to his roommates.
Allen, who is 20 years old, around 140 pounds and has blond hair and blue eyes, was last heard from Thursday, April 16 in a text message to a roommate that was traced to the Folsom Field area of campus. Audrey Sabo, one of his roommates and a junior at CU, said she saw him last on the morning of Monday, April 13, and that she was the last of her roommates to see him. Allen told roommate and CU junior Talia Soorenko he was at Norlin library in the afternoon on Tuesday, April 14 over the phone. He texted her Wednesday, April 15 saying he would be home late and to leave the door open at home, but he did not return. Allen’s parents are calling for a volunteer search party to meet at Chautauqua Trail today at 9:30 a.m.
Allen has been known to go hiking and running by himself in the past, around once per week, Soorenko said. Allen’s parents have urged Boulder area hikers to be on the lookout for their son; Allen’s guitar, laptop and backpack have been gone from his house since April 13.
During spring break, Allen was in Chicago with his parents and planned to hitchhike back to Boulder. He left a note and left home, not wanting his parents to worry, but was found less than a mile away and was taken back home. Sabo said Allen has told her that he gets depressed and wants to be alone sometimes, but he has no medical history of depression or prescriptions.
Both roommates said that there’s been a change in Allen’s mood and behavior recently.
“He’s been getting home later and later,” Soorenko said. “He definitely stopped hanging out with us.”
Soorenko said that Allen was close with all his roommates (there are four in the house), and that he’s never been in an argument with any of them. Soorenko convinced him to come on a hike in Chautauqua Park with one of her friends on Saturday, April 11 and said he enjoyed it.
Allen has been missing class and playing more guitar since mid-March. A communications major, he told his roommates his plans to study music therapy after a “spiritual awakening” that happened around that time, Sabo said.
“He walked out in the evening, and said he would not stop hiking until he got a sign,” Sabo said. “Because of that, something changed.” She said he went out to find something to point him in the right direction. He was hiking up Flagstaff road before dark that day.
A member of the University Choir, Allen had class in Macky Auditorium, and often went there alone to play guitar. Soorenko said Allen expressed a desire to attend a different school to study music therapy. Allen transferred to CU in January from Clemson University in South Carolina.
“He’s very spiritual, very philosophical, deep,” Soorenko said. He is introverted and not a big partyer, and he doesn’t have a lot of friends outside of the house, according to his roommates.
“He loves to read,” Soorenko said. She recently let him borrow one of her class books, “Thinking in Systems: A Primer,” by Donella Mellows, which she says discusses “how everything is interrelated.”
If you have any information on Tyler, please contact his parents at 708-642-2771 or at sheryl@sherylalleninteriors.com, and the Boulder Police Department at 303-441-3333.
