Ex-TCU student gets probation in hazing where students were ordered to drink 15 vodkas
A former TCU student involved in a 2018 hazing incident when fraternity pledges were ordered to take 15 drinks of vodka and eat expired guacamole has been sentenced to six months of probation, according to Tarrant County criminal court records.
The 23-year-old Memphis man was given the sentence last week in a Fort Worth courtroom.
The defendant, who was 19 at the time of the September 2018 incident at Texas Christian University, was sentenced to deferred probation on a charge of attempted hazing, which is a misdemeanor. Deferred adjudication of the case means the conviction won’t remain on his record if he successfully completes the terms of his probation. Prosecutors dismissed a charge of hazing causing serious bodily injury as part of a plea agreement.
The targets of the hazing were two freshman fraternity pledges. One pledge blacked out and was taken to a local hospital after an ambulance was called, while the second was left intoxicated in his dorm room, according to court documents.
The defendant and another 19-year-old TCU student from Massachusetts were arrested in September 2018 a few days after the hazing incident.
The other student who was arrested died a few days later when he jumped from the fourth floor of a parking garage on the university campus, police said in 2018.
The Star-Telegram obtained the arrest warrant for the hazing, which occurred on Sept. 3, 2018.
The warrant gave this brief account of the reported hazing incident: The defendant lived at the TCU Kappa Sigma chapter house, and the other arrested student lived at the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity house.
The pledges were ordered to the Kappa Sigma fraternity house on Sept. 3, 2018, and told to bring a “handle” of Tito’s vodka. A “handle” refers to a 1.75 liter bottle of vodka. The order was sent by a text message from a cell phone owned by the defendant.
The pledges arrived shortly after 4 p.m. that day with a bottle of vodka. The freshmen were directed to the defendant’s room on the second floor. The defendant called one pledge into a bathroom, handed him a beer and told him to drink the beer as fast as possible.
After that, the defendant emptied a bottle of decorative sprinkles, and the pledges were ordered to sort them. If they failed to complete the task in a timely manner, they were forced to drink vodka.
The two older students yelled at the pledges as they tried to sort the sprinkles and ordered them to drink vodka, the warrant stated. The pledges were ordered to drink from the bottle of vodka between 10 to 15 times.
The older students made them drink as long as they were counting, according to the warrant. Both pledges were also forced to eat expired guacamole.
One pledge was later found unconscious in the defendant’s room and another Kappa Sigma member believed that pledge had died, the warrant said.
Members called an ambulance and the pledge was taken to a hospital. That pledge “only remembers waking up in the hospital,” he told investigators, according to the warrant. His blood alcohol level was found to be at a potentially lethal concentration.
The second pledge was walked to his dorm room and left intoxicated.
The pledges were being hazed because they wanted to become formal members of Kappa Sigma fraternity, according to the warrant.
This report contains information from the Star-Telegram’s archives.
This story was originally published August 24, 2022 at 12:17 PM.
