By LYNETTE HAALAND, Four Points News
Last month — more than two and a half years after Vandegrift alumnus Megan Rondini’s death — the Tuscaloosa SAFE Center opened to perform sexual assault forensic exams in the University of Alabama city.
“We’re pleased to see progress and believe it honors Megan’s memory as well as her wish that no one should have been treated the way she was treated,” said Mike Rondini, father of Megan.
Megan was a former University of Alabama student who grew up in Steiner Ranch and graduated VHS in 2013. In July 2015, Megan, then 20, was entering her junior year as a pre-med honors student at UA. She was majoring in biology with a 3.812 cumulative GPA. She hung herself in February 2016, less than a year after she claimed she was raped by an influential businessman in Tuscaloosa, and then denied treatment from UA counseling services, or the proper handling of her case by the Tuscaloosa Sheriff’s Department.