Last night, Inside Edition aired a segment featuring seven families whose sons suffered grievous or fatal harm due to fraternity hazing. The family members included the parents of Daniel Santulli, Adam Oakes, Tim Piazza, and others. David Bianchi, who represents the Santulli family, was interviewed to give his take on the surveillance video from that night.
“They don’t know what to do. They’re afraid to call 911, so they don’t,” David said to Inside Edition, describing footage of fraternity members carrying an unresponsive Danny to their car. “And they pick him up and drop him on his head.”
“Danny is the most horribly injured fraternity pledge ever in the United States,” he added. “He’s blind and cannot speak.”
The 8-minute segment also reports on the almost identical alcohol abuse suffered by other victims across the country. As one parent explained, the hazing taking place across college campuses has deadly consequences. “It’s not just streaking and swallowing goldfish,” Tim Piazza’s mother said. “It is hard alcohol. Deadly, hard alcohol.”
Nearly 80 college students have been killed by hazing since 2007; the majority of those deaths involved alcohol.
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The segment also brings up the groundbreaking anti-hazing statute drafted in part by David Bianchi and Michael Levine of Stewart Tilghman Fox Bianchi & Cain, P.A.. The law incentivizes fraternity members to call 911 for help as soon as possible after somene is injured from hazing by making them immune to prosecution; one of the key causes of death in hazing cases is fraternity members’ hesitation to call 911 because they want to avoid legal trouble.
When asked if they believed their loved one would be alive still had 911 been called earlier, 6 of the 7 families raised their hands.
Watch the whole segment below: