THEY DRANK HIM TO DEATH
DA charges 18 Penn State frat bros
Prosecutors dropped the hammer Friday on a Penn State fraternity over an initiation ritual that featured a drinking “gauntlet” and ended in the death of a New Jersey teen.
Centre County District Attorney Stacy Parks Miller charged Beta Theta Pi and 18 of its members with an array of counts that include manslaughter, giving alcohol to minors and evidence tampering for the February death of Timothy Piazza.
Piazza, 19, was ordered to down vodka, beer and wine the night he fell down a flight of stairs and was left there by frat brothers for 12 hours, according to the criminal complaint.
Injuries caused him to internally bleed out 80 percent of his body’s supply while he spent the agonizing half-day at the bottom of the frat house’s basement steps, according to surgeons who tried to save him.
Piazza and 13 other pledges were lined up in the frat house’s basement on Feb. 2 and made to finish a nearly half-gallon “handle” of vodka, according to testimony given by fellow pledge Evan Rooney.
That averages out to just under 3 shots per pledge.
Then they were told to run “the gauntlet,” which included chugging a beer, guzzling wine from a bag and playing beer pong, Rooney told investigators.
The sole purpose of the onslaught was to get pledges drunk, and they were expected to finish as many as five drinks in just two minutes, the complaint states.
Frat members watched as pledges became sick from the excessive booze, but did not assign anyone to watch over them, investigators determined.
Afterward, a frat member put a visibly drunk Piazza on a first- floor couch and left him there.
He got up, stumbled to the front door and fumbled with the knob before giving up and lurching toward the basement, where he eventually tumbled down the stairs, according to court documents.
His blood-alcohol content was probably between .28 and .36 when he took the spill — a “lifethreatening” amount of alcohol, according to court expert Dr. Harry Kamerow.
It is also 3¹/2 to 4¹/2 times the legal limit for operating a vehicle.
Brothers waited 12 hours to take him to the hospital and then conspired to cover their tracks, ac- cording to cellphone records.
Piazza’s father, Jim, has called the death “a senseless and very preventable tragedy” that was the “result of a feeling of entitlement and flagrant disregard” of the law among the fraternity.
In response, Penn State banned the Beta Theta Pi chapter from campus, prohibited kegs at parties and postponed Greek life recruitment until next spring.
Eight defendants were scheduled to turn themselves in on Friday, and the remaining 10 are expected to turn themselves in some time next week, according to the criminal complaint.