Daniel Santulli hazing: CHILLING video shows teen's abuse before horrifying brain injury
Disclaimer: This article contains graphic footage which may be triggering to some readers
A chilling video shows a University of Missouri student being hazed before he allegedly suffered a serious brain injury. Daniel Santulli, 19, is unable to walk or communicate after the hazing incident that took place on October 19 at a Phi Gamma Delta party.
The footage, revealed on 'Good Morning America' on Thursday, June 9, shows Santulli and his fellow blindfolded pledges being led down a staircase, shirtless. Santulli is seen being hazed by being force-fed vodka through a funnel. The family’s attorney, David Bianchi, said Santulli appears to pass out and fall backward about two hours later. He is seen being carried to a couch and slipping onto the floor, seemingly unresponsive. Another person sits nearby.
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The horrifying hazing of Danny Santulli: Months after incident teen still can't walk, talk or see
'GMA' reported that his fraternity members later struggle to carry him towards a door, and drop him in the process. They finally drove him to a hospital. “I saw Danny in the medical ICU at the hospital at Mizzou. And it’s just a bunch of tubes everywhere. And that’s an image that will probably never leave my head,” his brother Nick Santulli said.
“Just the fact that nobody, they knew he was in distress and his lips were blue and nobody called 911. It’s like, I don’t know, I mean a 6-year-old calls 911,” Santulli’s mother, Mary Pat, said on the show. His mother recalled how the doctors told the family that Santulli would 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,” she said, tearfully adding that they “will not give up hope.”
Santulli’s dad, Tom, claimed that he is “100 percent” sure his son was hazed. The distressed dad called for felony charges against some of the students. Santulli's sister Santulli said she was “sick to my stomach seeing the people involved that harmed Danny walking around campus acting like they did nothing wrong.”
Bianchi has settled a lawsuit against the fraternity, called Fiji, as well as 22 other defendants. He sought in a court motion to add to the lawsuit fraternity brothers Samuel Gandhi and Alec Wetzler. Wetzler allegedly organized the event, the probable cause statement says. “We didn’t know about them when we filed the original lawsuit,” the lawyer said. The petition has been approved by Judge Joshua Devine. It alleges negligence against the two defendants.
Wetzler has reportedly been charged with misdemeanor counts of supplying alcohol to a minor and possession of alcohol by a minor and is due in court on July 5. Wetzler was a student of BA in Business Administration but is no longer enrolled at the school. Gandhi, on the other hand, has not been charged and remains a student of architecture.
According to the footage, Gandhi walked back to Santulli's room and found him unresponsive. He saw that Santulli had not moved from where he was left. Bianchi said the fraternity members are expected to be charged under the state’s hazing statute. Both the national fraternity and university have suspended the Missouri chapter.