Latest update May 30th, 2019 12:49 PM
13 CHARGED IN FAMU DRUM MAJOR DEATH
ORLANDO — Thirteen people were charged Wednesday in one of the biggest college hazing cases ever prosecuted in the United States — the death of a Florida A&M University drum major who authorities say was beaten by fellow members of the famed Marching 100 band.
The charges came more than five months after Robert Champion, 26, died Nov. 19 aboard a chartered bus parked outside an Orlando hotel after a football game against rival Bethune-Cookman College.
“The death . . . is nothing short of an American tragedy,” Orange County State Attorney Lawson Lamar said in a news conference announcing the charges. “No one should have expected that his college experience would include being pummeled to death.”
Eleven defendants were charged with hazing resulting in death, a felony, and misdemeanor offenses that all together could bring nearly six years in prison. Two others face misdemeanor charges. It was not immediately clear whether those charged were all students or whether they included faculty members or others involved in the road trip.
