An Ohio freshman died after drinking a bottle of liquor in a frat hazing. Now 8 men face charges. [View all]

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Source: Washington Post

Morning Mix

An Ohio freshman died after drinking a bottle of liquor in a frat hazing. Now 8 men face charges.

By Jaclyn Peiser
April 30, 2021 at 5:23 a.m. EDT

On the evening of March 4 at an off-campus house, members of a Bowling Green State University fraternity handed Stone Foltz and his fellow pledges 750-milliliter bottles of liquor and ordered them to finish it all by the end of the night, prosecutors said. ... Foltz, 20, finished the bottle but was so intoxicated that members of the fraternity, including his newly designated “big brother,” escorted him home and left him unconscious. Soon after he was in a hospital bed on life support. By March 7, he was dead.

On Thursday, eight men who were allegedly involved in Foltz’s death were charged with involuntary manslaughter, reckless homicide and evidence tampering. ... “The result of this event was catastrophic,” said Paul A. Dobson, the prosecutor in Wood County, Ohio, at a news conference on Thursday. “… This is the beginning of the criminal process for these men.”

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The news of Foltz’s death comes amid an ongoing national reckoning with fatal hazing rituals; less than two weeks earlier, Adam Oakes, a 19-year-old freshman at Virginia Commonwealth University, also died in a hazing incident following a Delta Chi fraternity party.

[VCU freshman found dead after fraternity event, his family says, and they are seeking answers]
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/adam-oakes-vcu-death/2021/03/01/14af5580-7ab8-11eb-a976-c028a4215c78_story.html

Foltz, a freshman business major from Columbus, didn’t want to go to the party at the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity chapter on March 4. In text messages with his mother, Shari Foltz, he said the event revolved around a “drinking ritual,” she told the Columbus Dispatch last month. His mother told him not to go, but Foltz said that if he didn’t participate, then he wouldn’t be allowed in the fraternity.

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Jaclyn Peiser Follow https://twitter.com/jackiepeiser
Jaclyn Peiser is a reporter on the Morning Mix team. She previously covered the media industry for the New York Times.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/04/30/bowling-green-fraternity-hazing-death/