Timothy Piazza, a 19-year-old Penn State sophomore, died from his injuries after falling down a flight of stairs during a pledging ceremony by the Beta Theta Pi fraternity.
The Beta Theta Pi fraternity and 18 of its brothers were charged Friday in the hazing death of Timothy Piazza, a 19-year-old Penn State sophomore.
The Centre County District Attorney announced more than 850 charges — including involuntary manslaughter — against the fraternity and its members for Piazza's death during a pledging ceremony in February.
Piazza died from his injuries two days after falling from a flight of stairs after being forced to consume "a life-threatening amount of alcohol" during a hazing ritual for Beta Theta Pi pledges, according to court documents.
None of the brothers called for medical help for 12 hours after Piazza first fell — and attempted to cover up their role in his death by deleting their online exchanges, prosecutors said.
The Centre County DA released a document revealing chilling details of the sequence of events at the ceremony on Feb. 2 that led to Piazza's death. It detailed charges against the fraternity and its brothers that included involuntary manslaughter, hazing, and furnishing alcohol to minors.
Piazza suffered from respiratory failure due to severe head trauma and compromised brain function, a medical expert testified. He had multiple traumatic brain injuries and a fracture at the base of his skull.
The operating surgeon who opened Piazza's abdominal cavity discovered four liters — 80% of a human body's total blood supply — of dark, old blood in his abdomen, the court document showed.
"Tim was an incredibly young man and an excellent student with very bright promising future ahead of him," his father Jim Piazza said at a press conference Friday. "He was awesome son, brother, boyfriend, and friend. We’re going to miss him terribly. He wanted nothing more than to make people laugh and just be good friend."
Jim Piazza said that the death of his son was the result of "a disobedience of law, a disregard of moral values which was then exacerbated by a egregious acts of self-preservation."
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Here's the evidence prosecutors released:
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