Judge: Ohio State not responsible for death
Slaying happened at suspended frat party
Ohio judge has dismissed a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the family of an Ohio State University student who was shot and killed outside a suspended fraternity house party in 2020, ruling that the university was not responsible for Chase Meola’s death that occurred off-campus.
Paul and Margaret Meola filed two separate civil lawsuits in October in both U.S. District Court in Columbus and in the Ohio Court of Claims as executors of the estate of their late son, arguing that Ohio State failed to adequately warn Meola and other students about the potential dangers of living off campus.
The lawsuits came about two years after Meola, 23, was killed around 2 a.m. on Oct. 11, 2020 in a shooting outside the Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity house, commonly referred to as Phi Psi, near the university’s main campus. Originally from New Jersey, Meola, was a fifthyear senior studying marketing.
On Feb. 17, Judge Dale A. Crawford sided with Ohio State by granting its motion for dismissal, indicating that Ohio State could not be liable for Meola’s death, as it occurred not on campus but at an unsanctioned fraternity house in the surrounding University District beyond the jurisdiction of the university.
“The University District is part of the City of Columbus, not OSU, and OSU did not control the fraternity house,” Crawford wrote in his ruling. “The criminal act occurred while a university student was at a private, off-campus residence.”
Meola was shot and killed around 2 a.m. that day in the parking area of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house on East 14th Avenue when Kinte Mitchell Jr. and others showed up at a party in the area and an altercation broke out. Mitchell, now 22, was identified as the shooter and remains in the Franklin County jail awaiting the resolution of his case after he was indicted for murder and a weapons charge in Meola’s death.
Meola’s parents did not name Mitchell as a defendant in either lawsuit.
According to the federal lawsuit, Meola was a member of Ohio State’s chapter of Phi Psi, which previous reporting from The Dispatch shows was placed on a four-year suspension in 2018. The chapter was also on a two-year probaan
tion for previous violations of the Code of Student Conduct when it was suspended.
The Meolas alleged in the Ohio Court of Claims lawsuit that although Phi Kappa
Psi was suspended, Ohio State leaders knew and “tacitly accepted” that suspended fraternities like Phi Kappa Psi continued to operate “and flagrantly violate the law and OSU’S code of conduct.”
“OSU not only failed to address its off-campus criminal environment, but it took proactive steps to suppress police enforcement in the University District
and other off-campus areas,” the lawsuit argued.
Crawford disagreed in his ruling. “On the night of Chase’s death, it was his fraternity, not OSU, that hosted the party at its house and whose members removed the uninvited individual,” Crawford wrote. “OSU’S duty to mitigate or prevent criminal activity and protect Chase and other students in the University
District, including the fraternity house, relates to rendering safe the conditions of premises over which it did not have possession or control, and as such is a duty OSU did not owe Chase.”
The Meola family’s lawsuit in federal court is still pending. elagatta@dispatch.com @Ericlagatta