Irvine, Calif. ? Irvine police are investigating whether a college student who died after a weekend football game between pledges and University of California, Irvine, fraternity members was a hazing victim.

Kenny Luong, 19, of Rosemead, died of head injuries about 2 p.m. Tuesday at Western Medical Center-Santa Ana, where several dozen friends and relatives had gathered to grieve.

Luong was among a group of Cal Poly Pomona students pledging Lambda Phi Epsilon, a nationally recognized fraternity. The students were playing against a team from the fraternity’s UC Irvine chapter, said Police Lt. Jeff Love. None wore a helmet or protective gear, he said.

“The game was part of nine weeks of pledging required to have a fraternity at Cal Poly,” Love said.

A fellow pledge who participated in the game, however, described it as “a hazing disguised as a football game.”

Daniel Dai, 21, of Alhambra, a business major at Cal Poly Pomona, said he and eight other pledges – including Luong – played against 30 to 40 fraternity members in what was supposed to be the culmination of the pledging process. Luong’s injury, he said, resulted from a tackle.

It was “as if he had the breath knocked out of him,” Dai said, “because he became limp and knocked to the ground. Kenny was one of the youngest guys in the group, but he was one of the guys with the most heart.

Love said police had no information suggesting that Luong’s injury resulted from a crime. “But given the fact that it was part of a pledging activity, we wanted to make sure,” he said.

Meanwhile, the UC Irvine chapter has been placed on “interim emergency suspension,” said university spokesman Jim Cohen.