Fraternity Members Charged in Fatal Hazing

Prosecutors have charged eight members of “an outlaw or rogue” fraternity at Cal State Chico with involuntary manslaughter one month after they allegedly forced a pledge to drink so much water he died of water intoxication.

After an intense night of hazing that authorities say bordered on torture, one of two pledges forced to drink numerous gallons of water and roll around in raw sewage in an icy cold basement, died the morning of Feb. 2.

Matthew William Carrington, 21, of Contra Costa County died coughing up blood and shivering on a fraternity house sofa.

“ ‘Water-hazing’ they call it,” Butte County Dist. Atty. Mike Ramsey said Friday. “Some of the [fraternity] members told us it had been going on for some years. It was a tradition there.”

Ramsey issued the warrants Thursday for the eight members of Chi Tau, which lost its national charter and affiliation with Cal State Chico in 2002 because of underage drinking and fights between members.

Four members of Chi Tau were charged with involuntary manslaughter, a felony carrying a potential four-year prison sentence. Gabriel Maestretti, 22, of Antioch, Calif.; John Paul Fickes, 19, of Anderson, Calif.; Carlos DeVilla-Abrille, 22, of Twain Harte, Calif.; and Jerry Lim, 24, of Chico, have each posted $15,000 bond, officials said.

Four others were charged with hazing, a misdemeanor that carries a one-year maximum sentence -- Richard Hirth, 22, of Saratoga, Calif.; and Chico residents Rex Garnett Jr., 20; Michael Fernandes, 19; and Trent Stiefvater, 20. Three of them have posted $5,000 bond each, and the fourth was expected to surrender Monday, county authorities said.

As the fraternity tried to regain university recognition in 2004, prosecutors said, some of those charged attended a campus lecture that carried a warning: A year earlier, a pledge at a New York state university died from water intoxication, a condition called hyponatremia, in which sodium levels in the blood fall to dangerous levels.

Carrington’s death was the second at a Chico fraternity since 2000, when an 18-year-old student died of alcohol poisoning. Three members of the Pi Kappa Phi fraternity were convicted of misdemeanor charges in that case.

The alleged hazing of Carrington and the surviving pledge, Mike Quintana, 22, from the San Francisco area, began on Jan. 30, according to court documents and authorities.

A pipe in the aging house backed up until 2 or 3 inches of raw sewage covered the cold concrete basement floor. The defendants ordered the pledges to perform push-ups and sit-ups in the sewage, prosecutors allege.

The next day was “pledge Olympics,” and the two pledges were ordered to run up and down stairs in the three-story house and compete in an indoor Wiffle ball tournament.

The following night, Maestretti, Fickes and DeVilla-Abrille allegedly gave Carrington and Quintana more orders and punishment. They allegedly turned on fans to keep the pledges cold and ordered them to drink from a 5-gallon water bottle or splash themselves when they answered a question on fraternity trivia incorrectly.

“What probably made it worse this time, deadly, was that they usually had more pledges. This time they had just two pledges -- just two people to drink all that water,” Ramsey said.

A source close to the case said each pledge drank about 5 gallons of water.