Report: UCF fraternity members shocked by gun at pledge event

Several members of UCF’s Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity looked on but did nothing as a pledge master suddenly took out an unloaded shotgun, racked it several times and placed it to the neck of a blindfolded pledge, a draft investigative report issued Tuesday reveals.

One fraternity member, who’d never held a gun before, said he froze as he watched a frightening scene unfolding with the pledges. According to the University of Central Florida report, the unnamed student looked over at the person next to him with a look of “What the hell is going on?” But he felt he couldn’t intervene because he was new. Afterward, he felt remorse for not getting involved, said the report, which provided new details in the incident.

Last month, the university temporarily suspended the predominantly Jewish fraternity after a student anonymously contacted the school police department Feb. 9. “A concern noted throughout this investigation is that many current members were present during the incident, and made the decision to not intervene, attempt to (or find a means to) remove the gun from the situation or report the incident,” the report said.

A current fraternity member said nobody knew the pledge master had a gun.

The fraternity, which started at UCF in 2000, has 61 members.

The blindfolds were supposed to make the pledges feel disoriented and force them to trust the fraternity leaders as they moved in the pledge master’s backyard, the report said.

Leaves were thrown at them so they could pretend they were in a forest. Somebody joked there were wild animals in the backyard so a gun would protect them, according the report. It was the type of event where pledges typically shared stories and bonded.

But at this initiation, the pledges were told to be quiet and warned there was a shotgun, another fraternity member told school officials. The pledges kept asking over and over if the gun was real, which is when the pledge master retrieved the weapon, he said.

“It happened really fast,” a member who witnessed it said in the report. “He stated that he left shocked. He said if it [the gun] was brought up ahead of time … that they would have told him it was a bad idea.”

One fraternity member said the incident was not brought up later during a chapter meeting.

He called it a “freak incident” at the fraternity, which he decided to join because the members were friendly and he felt at home there.

Jonathan Pierce, a spokesman for the fraternity, said the group is in the process of expelling the pledge master from the fraternity. He said he had not read the draft investigative report, so he did not immediately want to comment.

UCF spokeswoman Courtney Gilmartin would not say if the student with the gun was still enrolled at UCF or faced any disciplinary action.