Father: Son who died after hazing treated like ‘roadkill’
NEW YORK — A fraternity pledge who was ordered to guzzle alcohol during a hazing ritual and twice fell down a flight of stairs before his death was treated like “roadkill,” his father said Monday, days after criminal charges were filed against 18 of his Penn State fraternity brothers.
Jim Piazza, the father of 19-year-old engineering student Timothy Piazza, said the Beta Theta Pi fraternity members were to blame for his son’s February death.
“They planned this night out,” Piazza said. “They had all the intent to feed these young men lethal doses of alcohol — to bring them to alcohol poisoning levels. This was premeditated. They killed our son.”
The family of the college sophomore from Lebanon, New Jersey, told The Associated Press it’s considering a lawsuit but is focused now on the criminal case against the fraternity brothers, eight of whom face the most serious charge of aggravated assault, a felony that carries a sentence of 10 to 20 years in prison upon conviction.
Timothy Piazza consumed what prosecutors said was a life-threatening amount of alcohol during a hazing ritual on Feb. 2 in State College, Pennsylvania, and he died two days later.
Piazza’s parents said they would likely attend the court proceedings. A preliminary hearing that had been scheduled for this week has been pushed back to June.
Piazza’s mother, Evelyn Piazza, said her grief has worsened the more she’s learned about what happened to her son.
“My mind used to go to dark places before. Now I’m imagining more horrors so it’s really hard to fall asleep,” she said.
Jim Piazza said the fraternity brothers “tortured” their son.
“They held him captive and tortured him. They treated him like roadkill,” he said. “Knowing that your son suffered the way he did over such a long period of time and died a very slow and very painful death, frankly, it’s haunting.”
A grand jury report said security camera footage captured events inside the house that night, including pledges being ordered to guzzle alcohol after the ceremony. Piazza appeared to become inebriated and fell face-first down a flight of basement steps.
Fraternity brothers made half-hearted and even counterproductive efforts to help him, and when one member strongly advocated for summoning help he was shoved into a wall and told to leave, the report said.
Piazza apparently fell down the steps again early the next morning but was not discovered until about 10 a.m. Someone called 911 some 40 minutes later. Piazza later died as a result of severe head injuries.
The Piazzas said no one representing the university or the fraternity attended their son’s wake or funeral services.
Penn State said the administrator assigned to student funeral services had a personal emergency but notified the Piazza family he wouldn’t be there. It said it deeply regretted no one was sent in the administrator’s place.
Jim Piazza also noted none of the students involved has been expelled.
Penn State said disciplinary proceedings have started. It said it placed a graduation hold on an unspecified number of students named in the May 5 grand jury report.
WASHINGTON — Senate negotiators, meeting stiff resistance to the House’s plans to sharply reduce the scope and reach of Medicaid, are discussing a compromise that would maintain the program’s expansion under Obamacare but subject that larger version of Medicaid to new spending limits.
With 62 senators, including 20 Republicans, coming from states that have expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act — Ohio included — the House’s American Health Care Act almost certainly cannot pass the Senate. The House bill would leave millions of Medicaid beneficiaries without health coverage.
But Senate leaders face the challenge of how to ease the concerns of moderate Republicans or senators from Medicaid-expansion states without alienating conservative hard-liners such as Rand Paul of Kentucky, Ted Cruz of Texas and Mike Lee of Utah.
Meanwhile, moderate senators from both parties met Monday evening to explore bipartisan legislation. It’s unlikely that moderates can produce a package that will become the Senate’s chief bill, but the meeting underscored that Democratic and Republican centrists consider it important to show home-state voters they are seeking middle ground.