Megan Trussell’s Roommate Speaks Out After Their Fight and Her Death (Exclusive)

One of the last known people to see Megan Trussell alive — her roommate — is opening up for the first time about the 18-year-old college freshman whose death remains at the center of controversy in Boulder, Colo. 

“She was a once-in-a-lifetime kind of person,” Haili Strickland tells PEOPLE of Trussell. “Her heart and the way that she cared about people was so far beyond anything that I’ve seen.”

Late on Feb. 9, Trussell left the on-campus dorm at the University of Colorado in Boulder that she shared with Strickland after they fought, authorities have said.

Trussell disappeared, only to be found dead six days later near a creek just outside the city, her body covered with snow. It was her family who alerted authorities after being unable to reach her.

Her death was subsequently ruled a suicide from amphetamines, apparently Adderall.

Her parents have vehemently denied that, though, insisting law enforcement has not done a thorough job looking into what they see as signs of foul play, such as Trussell’s physical injuries and the lack of testing on some of the materials collected from the scene near her body.

Her parents’ suspicions have not been confirmed by authorities. The coroner’s office has said Trussell’s injuries didn’t kill her and were consistent with a fall.

“All available leads were followed until both our office and the Coroner’s Office reached our final conclusions,” a spokesperson for the Boulder County’s Sheriff Office previously said.

No one has been charged with causing Trussell’s death. The teen’s family continues to push for more investigation.

Now Strickland, 19, is speaking out about the young woman she had gotten to know since being paired as roommates during their freshman year as well as their final conversation.

Strickland agreed to an interview request all these months later, she says, only to share memories of Trussell.

“She absolutely adored her family,” Strickland says. “That was the first thing I knew about her. And I know she wouldn’t want them to hurt so badly. So that’s why I haven’t wanted to say anything, because I will take on whatever I need to for them [Trussell’s family] to grieve and be okay.”

Strickland is acutely aware of how she’s been swept up in the investigation — and the ongoing online chatter about the case — because of their fight the night that Trussell walked, alone, into the frigid darkness and then died.

Reports from the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office, reviewed by PEOPLE, state that Trussell’s family believed she and Strickland didn’t get along and that Strickland caused some problems as a roommate, such as letting a friend stay over too often.

Strickland says it wasn’t that simple. There was a real bond there, she says.

The two went to high school on the same campus in Denver, but Strickland says they only met when they were randomly matched to live together starting last fall. 

Strickland recalls that they both started texting and grabbed lunch, which turned into an hourslong hangout.

“At first, we thought that we were insanely similar,” she says. “We got to know each other more. We definitely learned that there were differences.” 

Strickland says Trussell, as a film student, “was really into the classics, stuff like that. I very much am not, I have no attention span,” whereas Trussell could be turned off by her roommate’s choice in songs until the odd track would catch her ear — and “she would actually like it,” Strickland says.

They found common ground despite contrasting tastes in music and movies, from politics to enjoying the popular and now-defunct video-sharing app Vine.

“We would sit there and just quote Vines back and forth and it was so dumb, but it was hilarious to us,” Strickland says. “We had very similar humor.”

She says Trussell was “genuinely kind,” remembering a time Trussell gave a homeless man on campus money after the two of them bought him food.

“She had absolutely no hesitation,” adds Strickland, who is studying psychology. “She pulled out $40 in cash that she had in her wallet. She was like, ‘This is all I have. But here.’ ”

During that first semester, Strickland says they spent “every minute together.”

“I remember the first weekend that she went back home, she wrote a little sticky note while I was sleeping and put it next to my head and she was like, ‘I’ll be back. Text me if you need me,’ ” Strickland says.

“[Trussell] would come with me when I went to the gym,” she continues. “I would go with her to her screening class sometimes. We sat there and did homework together, watched movies, everything.”

But yes, there were problems, Strickland says.

She says the two had the “typical roommate argument.”

“It was usually something really stupid, and we would laugh about it the next day,” she says. “Or we’d have a sit-down conversation about it and come to an agreement.”

By their second semester, Strickland says, Trussell started to make more friends and started dating someone. (PEOPLE is not identifying her then-boyfriend as he has not been accused of any wrongdoing.)

“It was new and exciting, and she was really into him, and they spent time together like all the time,” Strickland says. “He would come over to the dorm all the time, and we’d all sit there and hang out or whatever. She seemed to be getting happier.”

But — and this is where Strickland’s view differs from Trussell’s family — Trussell was also developing some signs of mental health issues, Strickland feels.

She says that she and Trussell had talked about mental health as roommates: She tried convincing Trussell to get a different therapist or to talk to her doctor for medication.

“It just never landed,” Strickland says.

Authorities have said in their reports that Trussell had no history of suicidal behavior and did not leave any sort of note in her room before she died. Trussell’s parents don’t believe she would kill herself.

But the case reports do indicate, according to what authorities learned from Trussell’s sister, that she had dealt with some issues with her grades and her parents’ divorce as well as what her sister thought might be standard teenage heartache.

Her sister also told investigators at one point that they had talked about suicidal ideation but “Megan wouldn’t do that and expressed that,” an official wrote in one of the reports, paraphrasing her sister.

In a previous interview with PEOPLE, Joe Trussell, Megan’s dad, said that the divorce was distressing but she “never once turned on herself.” 

“She handled it extremely well considering the circumstances,” he said. “She was a strong kid.”

On the night of Feb. 9, Strickland says she was at work and had a 15-minute break so she decided to return to their dorm to get her headphones. 

When she arrived, she found Megan and her boyfriend being intimate — and it turned into a “pretty bad” argument between the two of them.

“We had had a whole conversation, and she said that she respected it and that she understood,” Strickland says. “I walked in on them, and I just felt betrayed.”

She says that after their dispute, she left and returned to work. “That was the last time I saw her,” she says.

Megan and her boyfriend then got into their own argument, and he broke up with her and blocked her on his phone, according to the case files reviewed by PEOPLE.

Strickland says that for the first two days after Megan was gone, she thought her roommate had gone to her sister’s apartment “to just let things cool off between us.” She didn’t notify officials about Megan being gone.

Megan’s older sister was also a student at the university; her family asked that she not be identified because she wants privacy.

“I didn’t want to think that there was another possibility,” Strickland says. “Then it was that Wednesday morning and [resident assistant] came and knocked on my door and said, ‘Hey, have you seen your roommate?’ ” 

At that moment, Strickland says, “everything went dark.”

Strickland says that in those initial days of Megan’s disappearance, she was told by some people in her life that she needed to prepare for the worst outcome. Still, she says, she was hopeful.

“I had even texted her a couple days after, and I was like, ‘Just please come back. I don’t care about anything else,’ ” Strickland says. “ ‘I just want you to be okay.’ ”

Then on Feb. 15, Strickland says she learned, like the rest of the public, that Megan’s body had been located.

“I got a text from a friend and they said, ‘I’m so sorry.’ I was like, ‘What do you mean you’re sorry?’ And I just looked up her name,” Strickland says. “Then there were a bunch of news articles saying that they found her body, and that was how I found out.”

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Megan’s family has been vocally critical of the official investigation thus far, pointing to odd details like how her purse and phone were later discovered — not with her body — and what they call the lack of investigation of the scene where she was recovered.

Instead, her parents think she was attacked.

Her mom, Vanessa, Diaz, previously told PEOPLE she thinks someone took Megan’s purse and she was pulled as she fought back — giving her blunt force injuries that were confirmed by her autopsy. That would make the pills found in Megan’s system a cover-up by the assailant, and she would have been forced to take them.

“I would be willing to accept a suicide finding if you had definitive proof that that’s what happened,” Megan’s dad has said. “But there is too much evidence.”

Strickland, however, believes Megan died by suicide, though police previously wrote in one of their reports that, according to the investigator, “she never thought Trussell would harm herself.”

She tells PEOPLE Megan had in fact talked about suicide before.

Since Megan’s death, Strickland — who has moved into an apartment away from their dorm together— continues to think about what was lost.

“I go on campus and I see places that we’ve hung out, or I’ll see things that remind me of her, or I’ll hear a song that reminds me of her,” she says. “Every little thing, every day, it hurts a lot. And I miss her.”

If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health challenges, emotional distress, substance use problems, or just needs to talk, call or text 988, or chat at 988lifeline.org 24/7.