Frat brothers treated teen 'like road kill' in Penn State hazing death, parents say
READINGTON, N.J. — For the family of Timothy Piazza, the 19-year-old township resident who died after hazing at a Penn State fraternity on Feb. 4, the death of their son, brother and boyfriend was "murder."
In a series of emotional interviews with network morning news shows Monday, the distraught family came forward with their grief and anger over the events at Beta Theta Pi fraternity.
"This was not boys being boys," Jim Piazza told CBS Morning News. "This was murder."
"They (the fraternity brothers) treated him like road kill, a rag doll," Piazza told Today.
"They killed him," he said.
Eighteen members of the fraternity have been charged in connection with the pledging incident at Penn State. They are facing charges as serious as involuntary manslaughter and hazing to providing alcohol to minors.
The Piazza family focused their outrage on the 12 hours that passed between their son falling down a flight of stairs while undergoing "The Gauntlet," an initiation ritual where pledges are "force-fed" alcohol, to when a call for help was finally made in the morning.
"I think the individuals involved clearly bear the most responsibility," Jim Piazza said on Good Morning America. "If you read the timeline of what happened, they set out to feed these guys lethal amount of alcohol from the outset. There was intent there right from the beginning."
More: The shocking final hours of Penn State pledge Timothy Piazza's life
According to a grand jury report, a doctor calculated that Piazza's blood alcohol content at the time he fell down the stairs was between .28 and .36 percent. The legal limit for driving while intoxicated is .08 percent.
The report also said that doctors concluded Piazza suffered from "multiple traumatic brain injuries," including a fractured skull, and a lacerated spleen, which resulted in 80 percent of his blood supply in his abdominal cavity.
Efforts by the fraternity brothers to revive him after the fall were unsuccessful and, the Piazza family said, could have caused more injuries.
No one from Penn State or the fraternity came to Timothy Piazza's wake or funeral, the father said.
More: Why frat boys like hazing, if they live through it
"It was torture," said Evelyn Piazza, Timothy's mother.
"To leave him laying at the bottom of the basement steps for any length of time all by himself, it's all terrible," she said.
"It was horrific," Jim Piazza said.
The family said they haven't seen any of footage of the events captured on the fraternity's sophisticated surveillance system.
"I don't want to see it," Jim Piazza said, adding that he would be willing to watch it in the company of the Penn State president and board of trustees.
More: Penn State 'horrific' death: Pledge's family to sue fraternity