Video recovered, 10 more charged in Penn State frat death

Newly recovered security camera footage from inside a Penn State fraternity house showed that a pledge had been given at least 18 drinks over less than 90 minutes, investigators said Monday in announcing dozens of new charges related to the pledge’s death.

Centre County District Attorney Stacy Parks Miller charged 10 new defendants, reinstated charges against two people whose cases had been dropped and added counts against five who had previously been charged for actions surrounding the Feb. 4 death of Beta Theta Pi pledge Tim Piazza. One fraternity member is accused of deleting the video as police were seeking the footage.

Twenty-six people now face charges in the case.

Piazza, a 19-year-old engineering student from Lebanon, New Jersey, suffered a fractured skull, shattered spleen and other injuries, likely during a series of falls that occurred inside the house. He was estimated to have had a blood-alcohol level several times the legal limit for adult drivers.

The house’s security system captured many of the events the night Piazza was injured, footage that had already been played at a preliminary hearing for those charged previously. But until recently, that did not include the basement, where Piazza was found the next morning.

A court affidavit said one of the brothers, Braxton Becker, purposely deleted the basement footage two days after Piazza died, but the FBI was able to recover it.

Becker’s motive, wrote State College Police Detective David Scicchitano, was to conceal the worst of the drinking and hazing.

Detectives also found a text from Becker the day after the party, saying Piazza “was technically hazed into drinking that much.” In another text, Becker used an expletive to say that someone had argued against getting the pledges very drunk “but no one listened.”

Becker, 21, of Niskayuna, New York, was charged with evidence tampering, obstruction and hindering a prosecution. His lawyer did not return a message seeking comment.

In a news release, Parks Miller said the basement video “clearly depicts a continuation of the hazing activity previously captured upstairs,” including giving pledges beer, wine and vodka.

“In fact, on video, Tim Piazza does not obtain his own alcohol at any point — rather, every drink consumed was provided to him by a fraternity brother,” she said in the news release.

Piazza’s father, Jim, said at a news conference that his family was making plans for the holidays without his son.

“Over the last several months we listened to defense arguments centered around victim blaming or how could the defendants have known they were putting someone seriously at risk since no one died before, as if they were entitled to one free death, or the catch all argument of, ‘We don’t know,’” he said.

He said “coercing someone” to drink as much as his son did “is egregiously reckless and, according to the police and the DA, is criminal.”

In September, following an unusually long, hardfought preliminary hearing, a judge dismissed the most serious charges against the fraternity members. Parks Miller, who is leaving office at the end of the year, then refiled many of the charges.

The most serious offenses include involuntary manslaughter and aggravated assault, while others are charged with hazing or alcohol violations.

A lawyer for Joseph Ems, who had previously faced a reckless endangerment charge that was dismissed by the district judge, said he plans to seek dismissal of the three fresh charges against his client: hazing, furnishing alcohol to a minor and an alcohol violation.

“Not every tragedy is a crime,” said Ems’ lawyer, Bill Brennan. “And as tragic as the loss of this young man is, Joey Ems never should have been charged with a crime.”