Blog

Jul 22, 2026

Fraternity Hazing Wrongful Death Attorneys: Stone Foltz, a BGSU Sophomore, Died of Alcohol Poisoning After an Off-Campus Hazing Ritual Near Bowling Green, Ohio in Which Pledges Were Told to Drink an Entire Bottle of Liquor — Attorney911 Pursues Pi Kappa Alpha’s National Organization Behind the Local Chapter and the Public University Whose Anti-Hazing Enforcement Duties Were at Issue, Ralph Manginello’s 27+ Years of Federal-Court Trial Practice, Lead Counsel in the Active $10M+ Bermudez v. Pi Kappa Phi Hazing Lawsuit, Lupe Peña the Former Insurance-Defense Insider, We Preserve Fraternity Communications, University Greek-Life Oversight Records and Hospital Toxicology Before They Are Deleted or Purged, Millions Recovered in Wrongful-Death Cases, Ohio’s Wrongful-Death Act and the Sovereign-Immunity Framework That Governs Public-University Hazing Claims — Free 24/7 Consultation, No Fee Unless We Win, Hablamos Español, 1-888-ATTY-911

Bowling Green, Ohio Fraternity Hazing Death: How a $10 Million Settlement Was Built — and What It Means for Every Family Facing the Same Fight If your child came home from a fraternity event and didn’t come back — or if you’re reading this because someone else’s child didn’t — you already know that the hardest part isn’t understanding what happened. It’s understanding how so many people and institutions let it happen, and whether the law can hold any of them accountable. It can. Ohio has a statute written specifically for this. The settlements in the Bowling Green case — more than $10 million from the university, the national fraternity, and the individuals who organized the ritual — prove that the system that failed your child can be made to answer for it. We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm. We handle wrongful death cases, and we are currently lead counsel in an active hazing lawsuit against a university and a national fraternity. We know this fight because we are in it. What follows is everything the law, the medicine, and the evidence teach us about a fraternity hazing death in Ohio — written for the person who needs to know it at 2 a.m. What Happened at Bowling Green State University A Bowling Green State University sophomore — a young man named Stone Foltz — attended an off-campus Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity event in 2021. Prosecutors later said pledges were told to drink an entire bottle of liquor.…

37 min read Read Article

Jul 22, 2026

Adam Oakes, 19, Told to Drink a Large Bottle of Whiskey at a VCU Delta Chi Hazing in Richmond, Virginia — Dead by Morning From Alcohol Poisoning, the $28 Million Wrongful-Death Suit and the Path to Holding a National Fraternity Accountable: Attorney911 Pursues the National Organization, Its Educational Foundation and the Insurers Behind Forced-Alcohol Pledging Rituals, Ralph Manginello’s 27+ Years of Federal-Court Trial Practice, Lead Counsel in the Active $10M+ Bermudez v. Pi Kappa Phi Hazing Case, Lupe Peña the Former Insurance-Defense Insider Who Knows How Fraternity Carriers Set Reserves and Invoke Hazing Exclusions to Deny Claims, We Preserve the Group Chats, the Medical Examiner’s Toxicology and the National Organization’s Enforcement Records on a Retention Clock, Virginia’s Wrongful-Death Act and Anti-Hazing Law That Makes Consent No Defense Against Pure Contributory Negligence, Six Misdemeanor Convictions and Zero Jail Days, the Firm Has Recovered Millions in Wrongful-Death Cases — Free 24/7 Consultation, No Fee Unless We Win, Hablamos Español, 1-888-ATTY-911

Richmond, Virginia Fraternity Hazing Death: The $28 Million Lawsuit and What It Means for Every Family Facing a Hazing Loss If you are reading this at 2 a.m. because your child is gone — because a fraternity told them to drink something no human body can survive, and then left them on a floor to die — you are in the worst moment of your life, and you are also in a fight you did not choose. We are going to tell you everything we know about what happened at Virginia Commonwealth University in February 2021, what the law in Virginia actually says about hazing deaths, who can be held accountable, what the evidence looks like, what the money is, and what the fraternity’s insurance company is already doing to make this go away cheaply. This is not a news recap. This is the legal map of a hazing wrongful death case in Virginia, built by trial attorneys who have stood in this fight. A 19-year-old freshman from Loudoun County received a bid to the Delta Chi fraternity at VCU. He was told to drink a large bottle of whiskey as part of a hazing ritual. He was found dead the next morning. The chief medical examiner ruled the cause of death: alcohol poisoning. Six fraternity members were convicted of or pleaded guilty to misdemeanor hazing or providing alcohol to a minor. None went to jail. Charges against five more members were dropped. The family filed a $28 million wrongful…

46 min read Read Article

Jul 22, 2026

Mizzou Fraternity Hazing & Catastrophic Brain Injury: Danny Santulli’s Blindness and Around-the-Clock Care After Forced Alcohol Consumption at Phi Gamma Delta’s Pledge Dad Reveal Night in Columbia, Boone County — Attorney911 Holds National Fraternity Organizations Accountable When Their Own Investigations Identify a High Tolerance for Hazing and a Bystander Effect Yet They Fail to Act, Ralph Manginello’s 27+ Years of Federal-Court Trial Practice, Lead Counsel in the Active $10M+ Bermudez v. Pi Kappa Phi Hazing Lawsuit, Lupe Peña the Former Insurance-Defense Insider, We Preserve the Internal Investigation Documents, University Disciplinary Records and Surveillance Footage Before They Disappear, Missouri’s Anti-Hazing Statute and Comparative-Negligence Framework, TBI ($5M+ Recovered) and $50M+ Total Recovered for Injury Victims — Free 24/7 Consultation, No Fee Unless We Win, Hablamos Español, 1-888-ATTY-911

When a Fraternity Hazing Turns Catastrophic in Columbia, Missouri: What the Documents Prove and What Your Family Can Do The phone rings at midnight. Your son is at University of Missouri Hospital. The voice on the other end says he was found unconscious at a fraternity house. By the time you reach Columbia from wherever you live, the neurologist has already told you the words no parent is prepared for: the brain damage is catastrophic, permanent, and irreversible. He cannot see. He cannot speak. He cannot walk. He will need around-the-clock care for the rest of his life. If you are reading this page, you may be that parent. Or you may be the parent who got the call early enough — whose child survived but came home changed, traumatized, injured in ways the fraternity dismisses as “just what happens during pledge season.” Either way, you are in the same moment: the moment you realize that what happened to your child was not an accident. It was a system. And the system had warning after warning after warning before it ever reached your family. We are Attorney911. We are a trial firm that takes hazing cases, and we write this page as the resource we wish every family in Columbia, Missouri, could read before the fraternity’s insurance company calls, before the university sends its “we are investigating” letter, before anyone hands you a document to sign. Everything here is grounded in Missouri law, in the public records from the Mizzou…

37 min read Read Article

Jul 22, 2026

Fraternity Hazing & Negligent Supervision Attorneys: A Pledge Suffers Traumatic Brain Injury After Basement Beatings and Blunt-Force Head Trauma at SAE’s Founding Chapter in Tuscaloosa, Alabama — Attorney911 Pursues the National Fraternity and the Local Chapter Structure Behind a Hazing Ban Left Unenforced, We Move to Preserve Surveillance Footage, Member Communications and Chapter Records Before the 30-Day Overwrite, Ralph Manginello’s 27+ Years of Federal-Court Trial Practice, Lead Counsel in the Active $10M+ Bermudez v. Pi Kappa Phi Hazing Lawsuit, Lupe Peña the Former Insurance-Defense Insider, TBI ($5M+ Recovered), Alabama’s Anti-Hazing Law and Pure Contributory-Negligence Doctrine — Free 24/7 Consultation, No Fee Unless We Win, Hablamos Español, 1-888-ATTY-911

Tuscaloosa Fraternity Hazing Lawyer — SAE Pledge’s Traumatic Brain Injury and the National Organization That Let It Happen Your son went to the University of Alabama to get an education. He came home from the emergency room with a traumatic brain injury. He told you what happened in that fraternity basement — or the parts he could remember between the blows to the head — and what he described is not a tradition. It is a crime. The people who did this to him called it pledgeship. The law calls it hazing, and in Alabama, that is something a family can take to court. You are sitting at a kitchen table in Tuscaloosa, or maybe you drove three hours from Birmingham, or you flew in from out of state because your child goes to school here and you never thought this would happen. The hospital sent him home with a diagnosis of traumatic brain injury and post-concussive syndrome. The fraternity has not called. The university sent a form letter. Someone at the national organization said they banned hazing in 2014 — but your son was beaten in their basement last month, and nobody stopped it. We handle these cases. Not as a side practice — fraternity hazing litigation is something we are actively doing right now, and the medicine, the law, and the evidence in a case like this are what we know cold. What happened to your child was not an accident, not a rite of passage, and not…

41 min read Read Article

Jul 22, 2026

After Timothy Piazza Consumed 18 Drinks in 82 Minutes During a Penn State Fraternity Pledge Initiation and Fell Down Basement Stairs Suffering Severe Head and Abdominal Injuries — Pennsylvania Hazing & Wrongful Death Attorneys at Attorney911, We Pursue the National Fraternity Organizations, Shuttered Chapters and Security Companies Behind Pledge Rituals That Turn Deadly, We Preserve the Surveillance Video, Cellphone Records and Fraternity National-Organization Documents Before the Overwrite Cycle Destroys Them, the Anti-Hazing Statute and Wrongful-Death Act Provide Separate Civil Remedies Including Survival Damages for Two Days of Conscious Pain and Suffering After the 40-Minute Delay in Calling for Help, Ralph Manginello’s 27+ Years of Federal-Court Trial Practice, Lead Counsel in the Active $10M+ Bermudez v. Pi Kappa Phi Hazing Lawsuit, Lupe Peña the Former Insurance-Defense Insider, the Firm Has Recovered Millions in Wrongful-Death Cases — Free 24/7 Consultation, No Fee Unless We Win, Hablamos Español, 1-888-ATTY-911

Pennsylvania Hazing Death: What the Beta Theta Pi Sentencing Means for Families Seeking Justice If you are reading this because your child was hurt or killed in a fraternity hazing event — or because you watched the news about the sentencing of two former Penn State fraternity leaders and you need to understand what the law actually allows a family to do — you are in the right place. We are Attorney911, The Manginello Law Firm, and we are writing to you the way we would speak to a family across a kitchen table: plainly, honestly, and with the full weight of what we know about how these cases work. On October 1, 2024, a judge in Centre County, Pennsylvania, sentenced the former president and the former vice president of Beta Theta Pi’s Penn State chapter to two to four months in jail, followed by three years of probation and community service. They had pleaded guilty to fourteen counts of hazing and one count of reckless endangerment — all misdemeanors — in connection with the February 2017 death of Timothy Piazza, a 19-year-old engineering sophomore from Lebanon, New Jersey, who consumed at least eighteen drinks in eighty-two minutes during a pledge initiation event called an “obstacle course,” fell multiple times, suffered severe head and abdominal injuries, and was found unresponsive in the fraternity’s basement the next morning. It took fraternity members approximately forty minutes after finding him injured and unconscious before they called for help. He died on February 4,…

44 min read Read Article

Jul 22, 2026

Southern University Hazing Death of Caleb Wilson in Baton Rouge: Attorney911 Pursues Omega Psi Phi’s National Organization and Local Chapter, the Warehouse Operator, and the University Behind the Pledging Ritual That Killed a 20-Year-Old Mechanical Engineering Student Punched Repeatedly in the Chest — Ralph Manginello’s 27+ Years of Federal-Court Trial Practice, Lead Counsel in an Active $10M+ Hazing and Institutional-Liability Lawsuit, Lupe Peña the Former Insurance-Defense Insider Who Knows How the Claims Machine Values and Denies These Cases, We Move to Preserve Warehouse Surveillance Footage, Cell Phone Records and Fraternity Pledge Files Before the Overwrite, Louisiana’s Anti-Hazing Civil Remedy and Wrongful-Death Doctrine, the Firm Has Recovered Millions in Wrongful-Death Cases, Louisiana’s One-Year Prescriptive Period Is Running — Free 24/7 Consultation, No Fee Unless We Win, Hablamos Español, 1-888-ATTY-911

Baton Rouge Hazing Death: Southern University Student Killed in Omega Psi Phi Pledging Ritual — Louisiana Legal Rights Explained You are reading this at a hour when nobody should have to read anything. Your family lost a young man — a 20-year-old mechanical engineering student, a musician in Southern University’s Human Jukebox marching band, a person with decades of life ahead — and the way he died is something no family should ever have to learn about. He was punched in the chest, repeatedly, during a pledging ritual for a fraternity he wanted to join. That is not an accident. That is not a tradition. Under Louisiana law, that is a crime, and it is also something the civil law was specifically written to let your family hold people accountable for. The first thing you need to hear, and the most important thing on this entire page, is this: your child is not at fault. Louisiana’s anti-hazing statute exists specifically because the legislature understood that the power dynamics of pledging make participation non-voluntary in every sense that matters legally. A pledge who shows up to a ritual is not “consenting” to being beaten — he is responding to coercion that the law recognizes and refuses to treat as a defense. The fraternity’s insurance company will try to blur that line. The law draws it bright, and it draws it on your family’s side. The second thing you need to hear is that Louisiana has one of the shortest filing deadlines…

41 min read Read Article

Jul 22, 2026

Caleb Wilson, 20, Southern University Human Jukebox Marching Band Member, Killed by Repeated Boxing-Glove Chest Punches in an Omega Psi Phi Fraternity Hazing Ritual at a Baton Rouge Warehouse, Collapsed and Seized as the Group Falsely Reported a Basketball Collapse: Attorney911 Pursues the National Fraternity and Its Chapter for Wrongful Death Under Louisiana’s Anti-Hazing Statute With Its Civil-Penalty Provision, Ralph Manginello’s 27+ Years of Federal-Court Trial Practice, Lead Counsel in an Active $10M+ Hazing Institutional-Liability Case, Lupe Peña the Former Insurance-Defense Insider Who Knows How Fraternity Insurers Invoke Hazing Exclusions, We Preserve Warehouse Surveillance and Fraternity Communications Before the Overwrite, the Firm Has Recovered Millions in Wrongful-Death Cases, Free 24/7 Consultation, No Fee Unless We Win, Hablamos Español, 1-888-ATTY-911

When a Fraternity Hazing Ritual Kills a Student in Baton Rouge If you are reading this page, you may have just learned that what happened to your child, your sibling, your student, or your friend was not an accident at a basketball park. You may have learned that the story you were told first — the story about a young man collapsing during a pickup game — was a lie constructed in the hours after he died, while the people who knew the truth drove to a hospital, dropped him off, and left before anyone could ask a real question. You may be sitting with a police report that finally says what actually happened, and you may be wondering whether the criminal charges you see on the news are the only accountability available to your family. They are not. What happened in Baton Rouge on February 27, 2025, was a crime, and the criminal prosecution of the individuals who punched a 20-year-old mechanical engineering student in the chest until he collapsed, seized, and died is necessary and important. But criminal court is not the only courtroom. Louisiana built a civil remedy specifically for this kind of death — a law that lets families hold not just the individuals who threw the punches but the organization that created the culture, the chapter that ran the ritual, and the institution that was supposed to stop it. That civil remedy is what this page is about. We are a trial firm that takes…

39 min read Read Article

Jul 22, 2026

Southern University Fraternity Hazing Death of Caleb Wilson: Baton Rouge Wrongful Death Attorneys at Attorney911 Pursue the National Fraternities, Local Chapters, and Premises Owners Behind Off-Campus Hazing Rituals, Ralph Manginello’s 27+ Years of Federal-Court Trial Practice, Lead Counsel in the Active $10M+ Hazing Lawsuit Bermudez v. Pi Kappa Phi, Lupe Peña the Former Insurance-Defense Insider Who Knows How the Claims Machine Values and Denies These Cases, We Secure Warehouse Surveillance Footage and Fraternity Communications Before the Overwrite Cycle Purges Them, Commotio Cordis From a Chest Blow at an Omega Psi Phi Pledging Ritual and the Failure of Every Person Present to Call 911, Louisiana’s Anti-Hazing Statute and Wrongful-Death Doctrine, the Firm Has Recovered Millions in Wrongful-Death Cases — Free 24/7 Consultation, No Fee Unless We Win, Hablamos Español, 1-888-ATTY-911

When a Fraternity Ritual Kills Your Child and No One Picks Up the Phone Your son went to college to build a future. He is never coming home. The people who killed him were the ones he trusted enough to call brothers — and when he collapsed on the floor of a warehouse in Baton Rouge, not one of them dialed 911. That fact is going to sit in your chest for the rest of your life. We cannot change it. What we can do is make sure the law does not let it stand quietly. We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We are a trial firm that takes Louisiana wrongful-death and catastrophic-injury cases, working with local counsel where the rules require it. Our managing partner, Ralph Manginello, has spent 27-plus years in courtrooms, including federal court. He is currently lead counsel in an active hazing lawsuit — a $10 million case against a fraternity and a university in Harris County, Texas. That case is not this one. But the architecture of a hazing death — the culture that made it possible, the organization that failed to stop it, the individuals who chose violence, and the silence that followed — is something we know how to dismantle in court. If your family is reading this at 2 a.m. in a house that still has your child’s backpack by the door, here is the first thing you need to hear: what happened to Caleb Wilson was not his…

41 min read Read Article

Jul 22, 2026

Southern University Hazing Death of Caleb Wilson in Baton Rouge: Attorney911 Pursues Omega Psi Phi Fraternity and Every Liable Party Under Louisiana’s Max Gruver Act — Ralph Manginello’s 27+ Years of Federal-Court Trial Practice, Lead Counsel in the Active $10M+ Bermudez v. Pi Kappa Phi Hazing Case, Lupe Peña the Former Insurance-Defense Insider, We Move to Preserve the Group Chats, Pledge Witness Statements and Hospital Intake Records Before They Disappear, Commotio Cordis: How a Boxing-Glove Chest Blow With Minimal Visible Trauma Causes Lethal Cardiac Arrhythmia, the Failure to Call 911 and the False Basketball Cover Story as Independent Civil Claims, Louisiana’s One-Year Prescriptive Period Running From February 27, 2025, the Firm Has Recovered Millions in Wrongful-Death Cases — Free 24/7 Consultation, No Fee Unless We Win, Hablamos Español, 1-888-ATTY-911

Baton Rouge Fraternity Hazing Death: Your Family’s Legal Rights After a Southern University Student Is Killed During Initiation You are reading this because someone you love is gone. A young man who should be in class right now, or at band practice, or studying for an engineering exam, is instead at the center of a criminal investigation and a news story that uses his name in headlines. The people who called themselves his brothers punched him in the chest until his heart stopped — and then they drove him to a hospital and lied about how he got there. You are angry, you are grieving, and you do not know what happens next. Here is what happens next. Louisiana gives a family whose child was killed by hazing the right to hold every person and every institution that caused that death accountable in civil court — not just the individual who threw the punches, but the fraternity that organized the ritual, the national organization that failed to stop it, and the university that failed to protect the student it enrolled. But Louisiana also gives that family one of the shortest deadlines in the nation to act. The clock started the day your loved one died, and it runs out fast. We are a trial firm that takes Louisiana wrongful-death and catastrophic-injury cases, working with local counsel where required. We have built this page so that when you finish reading it, there is no follow-up search left to type — you…

40 min read Read Article

Jul 22, 2026

Alabama high school grad arrested in Caleb Wilson’s Louisiana HBCU fraternity hazing death – AL.com

When a Fraternity Hazing Ritual Kills: Louisiana Law, the Max Gruver Act, and Your Family’s Right to Hold Every Level Accountable If you are reading this because someone you love was killed in a fraternity hazing ritual in Baton Rouge, here is the first thing you need to know: Louisiana gives you one year. Not two years, not three — one year from the day your loved one died to file a civil wrongful death claim, and that clock is already running. The criminal arrests you are seeing on the news do not pause it. The police investigation does not pause it. And while you are grieving, the evidence that would prove what really happened — the surveillance video from the building where it happened, the cell phone messages between the people who were there, the witness memories of the other young men who stood in that room — is disappearing on its own schedule, not yours. We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We are a trial firm that takes Louisiana wrongful death and hazing cases, working with local counsel where required. Ralph Manginello, our managing partner, has spent 27-plus years in courtrooms, including federal court, and is currently lead counsel in an active $10 million hazing lawsuit against a university and a national fraternity in Harris County, Texas — a case that has taught us exactly how these organizations defend themselves and exactly where their defenses crack. Lupe Peña spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm…

21 min read Read Article