Seventh defendant in YSU hazing case pleads guilty


By Joe Gorman

jgorman@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

The seventh of nine people charged in 2012 with hazing two pledges to a Youngstown State University fraternity pleaded guilty Friday in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court.

Wade Hampton Jr., 28, entered guilty pleas before Judge Shirley J. Christian to two misdemeanor counts of hazing. The maximum sentence for each charge is 30 days in jail and a fine.

Sentencing is set for July 24. He originally was charged with felonious assault.

Hampton and the others were charged after two pledges to the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity in 2012 told police, after they were hospitalized, that they were beaten as part of an initiation process into the fraternity. Prosecutors said the two men who wanted to pledge the fraternity were beaten consistently, including paddlings and beatings with fists and a clothes hanger.

Assistant Prosecutor Dawn Cantalamessa told Judge Christian that the beatings took place over a period of three days and could have lasted as long as five days. One of the victims was in a coma because of his injuries, and the other victim also had medical problems and was hospitalized. Cantalamessa said.

“Those boys suffered,” Cantalamessa said.

Cantalamessa said there were varying degrees of involvement for the nine who were charged, and plea offers were based on that. Some of the defendants were more active or complicit in the beatings than others, Cantalamessa said.

“Some of them were more culpable than others, and Mr. Hampton is down on the scale,” Cantalamessa said. “We dealt with each defendant separately based on what those boys told us.”

Hampton told the judge he had graduated in 2011 with a degree in criminal justice and corrections and actually had a job in the corrections field at the time he was indicted – but he lost it after 90 days because the case was still pending.

Of the nine people who were indicted in the case, two still have their charges pending. They are set to go on trial July 27.

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