University Of Missouri Frat Brothers Charged With Felony After Inflicting Painful Injury On Student, 19

Two frat boys from the University of Missouri are facing charges in connection with a 19-year-old boy being left blind, in a wheelchair, and brain-damaged after being forced to down a family-sized bottle of Tito's vodka.

Ryan Delanty and Thomas Shultz are indicted in Missouri's Boone County in connection with the treatment of Daniel Santulli, a teenager whose family say was forced to drink until his heart stopped last October during pledge month at Phi Gamma Delta.

Apart from this, Shultz is facing an additional felony charge of tampering with physical evidence.

The 19-year-old has been left permantely disabled and according to his family lawyer, this is the worst-known incident of hazing abuse in US history.  

Santulli's family has previously filed civil suits against 23 members of Phi Delta Gamma but this is the first time anyone has been criminally charged.

It is yet to be established if Delanty and Shultz have been named as defendants in that civil suit. 

The two young men are charged with felony hazing and misdemeanors of supplying liquor to a minor or intoxicated person.

According to reports, Santulli was force-fed beer through a tube and told to down an entire bottle of vodka by his 'fraternity fathers,' including Delanty.

By the end of the night, Santulli had a disturbing .468 blood alcohol level, six times the legal limit in Missouri.

Among other charges, Delanty is accused of forcing the bottle of vodka to Santulli and telling him to drink, while Shultz was the fraternity's vice president and brought the vodka for the party. Shultz is 21, while Delanty is believed to be around 20 but his age is unclear.

In an inhumane manner, when Santulli passed out from forceful drinking and went into cardiac arrest, they dumped him outside a hospital. 

Now his life is destroyed as he can never walk or talk or see again and his mother Mary Pat has quit her banking job to care for him full time. 

The family has filed cases against the fraternity, the owner of the house and the frat members.  

'It's as horrible as it could possibly be and (have him) still be alive,' Santulli family's attorney David Bianchi told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. 'It's the worst fraternity hazing injury ever in the United States. We've been doing these cases for 30 years. I know the landscape of hazing. I know the defense lawyers who defend the fraternities. And everyone agrees this is the worst ever.'

Bianchi has filed the civil suits against members of Phi Delta Gamma, with all but two settling out of court. 

So far, Delanty and Shultz are the only people who've been indicted by Boone County (where the school is located), but further criminal charges are likely to follow.   

'There are probably another dozen or more fraternity members who were responsible for this hazing event,' Bianchi added. 

Surveillance footage has emerged of the brutal hazing. Santulli was attending 'Pledge Dad Reveal Night' at Phi Gamma Delta. 

The teenager was forced by the frat brothers to chug down a 1.75 liter bottle of Tito's and had beer force-fed to him through a tube. 

Surveillance footage obtained by Good Morning America shows Danny and the other pledges being led shirtless and blindfolded down a staircase in the frat house. 

Another piece of evidence shows Danny was force-fed beer through a tube and he is seen falling backward and then passing out on a table and slumped on a couch. 

The disturbing footage then shows the panicked frat brothers trying to carry him into a car to take him to the hospital once they realized how severe his condition was. 

And by the time he reached the hospital, he had stopped breathing and enough brain damage was done. 

After months in a rehabilitation center, Danny was recently taken home to Missouri where his mother now cares for him round-the-clock. 

His family previously sued 23 people, including the fraternity, and won their case with an undisclosed settlement but they are now suing two individual frat boys; Sam Gandhi and Alec Wetzler. 

They are also demanding felony charges be brought against the pair. 

Wetzler is facing mutliple charges, including misdemeanor and providing an underage with alcohol and he is no longer enrolled at the school, but Gandhi has not been charged and he remains a student. 

According to the family's lawsuit, Gandhi saw the dire state Danny was in but did nothing to help until it was too late. 

In an interview with Good Morning America on Thursday, Danny's mother cried as she explained that none of the boys ever called 911.

'Just the fact that nobody... they knew he was in distress. His lips were blue and nobody called 911. I mean, six year olds call 911.' 

She added that he will need care 'for life'. 

'He's still not talking or walking, he's in a wheelchair. He lost his vision. But he hears us and he knows we're there. We'll just keep fighting - we're not going to give up hope, she added. 

Danny's sister told of her disgust that the frat boys responsible had not been charged. 'It makes me sick to my stomach seeing the people involved that harmed Danny walking around campus acting like they did nothing wrong,' she said. 

As per the lawsuit, the fraternity brothers gave Danny a family-sized handle of Tito's vodka and told him to finish it throughout the night. 

He had, at that point, been at their 'beck and call' for a month as part of the grueling hazing process. 

'He was sleep deprived, was having to buy things for the fraternity brothers with his own money and was repeatedly ordered to clean the brothers' rooms and bring food, alcohol and marijuana to them at all hours of the night.

'Making matters worse, during the pledging process, Danny had been ordered to climb inside of a trash can that had broken glass in it,' the lawsuit reads. 

Two nights before the incident, Danny cried to his sister that he'd had enough, the lawsuit claims. 

His family told him to quit the fraternity but he said he didn't want to because he 'wasn't a quitter.' 

On the night of the hazing, the lawsuit says Weltzer stood on a chair 'looking for a target' and spotted Danny. He then forced him to drink a beer via a tube, then made him return to his family-sized bottle of Tito's. 

The recent petition alleges Wetzler put a tube into Santulli's mouth and poured beer down his throat, coercing him to drink an excessive amount of alcohol.

Another student, Gandhi then walked away from Santulli after initially trying to assist him when it was clear that the freshman was dangerously intoxicated, Bianchi claims.

The lawsuit states that he walked back into the room and saw the teenager had not moved from where he left him.

The 19-year-old's blood-alcohol content was 0.486 percent, more than six times the legal limit for driving. 

Santulli's near-death hazing is the latest in a string of similar incidents in America in the last ten years. 

Reportedly, there have been 200 hazing deaths reported across the school since 2000, with 2019 being one of the deadliest years. 

The most recent death was that of Phat Nguyen, a Michigan State University student who died in November last year from alcohol poisoning. He had pledged to Phi Alpha Phi. 

In another reported incident, Adam Oakes and Stone Foltz died in two separate incidents at Virginia Commonwealth University and Bowling Green State University. They both suffered acute alcohol poisoning. 

In 2020 there were no hazing deaths reported because schools were closed due to COVID-19. 

In 2019, five kids died in alcohol-related hazing incidents.